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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25666729">Powder and Feathers</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites'>DictionaryWrites</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johannes_Evans/pseuds/Johannes_Evans'>Johannes_Evans</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Magic Beholden [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aggression, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angel Wings, Angel/Human Relationships, Angels, Attempted Murder, Barebacking, Biting, Brotherly Bonding, Catholic Character, Catholicism, Complicated Relationships, Consent Issues, Control Issues, Cuckolding, Dark Comedy, Dark Fantasy, Depression, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fallen Angels, Falling In Love, Fighting Kink, French Characters, French Revolution, Gaslighting, Humor, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insecurity, Ireland, Irish Catholicism, Irish Republicanism, Les Misérables References, M/M, Magical Realism, Neglect, Non-Consensual Spanking, Original Character(s), Original Mythology, Original Universe, Possessive Behavior, Power Dynamics, Priests, Public Blow Jobs, Public Display of Affection, Pussy Spanking, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Rough Sex, Self-Esteem Issues, Siblings, Spanking, Sweet/Hot, Threesome - M/M/M, Topping from the Bottom, Trans Male Character, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Urban Fantasy, Voyeurism, Worldbuilding, Wrestling, informed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:55:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>218,493</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25666729</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johannes_Evans/pseuds/Johannes_Evans</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It seems to Aimé Deverell that there is very little point to life, except for what pleasures can be enjoyed before the grave. Life is short - thank God - but at least there's enough in the world to dull the senses in the meantime. </p><p>That philosophy shatters like glass when he meets Jean-Pierre, an angel.</p><p>(This is an original work with some heavy inspiration from Les Misérables.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Centuries-Old Angel of War/Depressed Idealistic Art Student (OCs)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Magic Beholden [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844758</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>408</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>109</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Magic Beholden</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Cast of characters is contained in the end notes. </p><p>Warnings for this story: dark themes; unhealthy romantic/sexual dynamics, including manipulation, gaslighting, and possessive behaviour; violence and mild gore; references to past child abuse; alcoholism and addiction issues; depression and mental health issues; trauma; self-harm and self-destructive tendencies, with a reference to past suicide attempts.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p>
<p>When the Great Fall happens, it happens all at once.</p>
<p>It does not feel like falling: instead, it is as if the very world comes up to meet it at speed, launched with impossible speed, and when its feet (feet! feet!) are struck from beneath by the awful ground, it screams. For the first time in its existence (for before now, it has never lived) the angel feels pain.</p>
<p>Many new experiences happen in one rush, in one singular moment: it fills lungs, which it never had before, and feels the cold air rush down a new throat to inflate them, feels it sting; it feels the desperate soak of the rain on its skin, trickling down its body and flattening the feathers of its wings; it screams, and it is chilled to find that the noise that comes forth is just that, just noise.</p>
<p>Corporeality cloaks its body in a new skin, made of flesh and bone and hair and blood, and it screams, and screams, and screams.</p>
<p>The rain comes down from the heavens in heavy, steel-grey sheets, buffeting its fresh skin, and it comes down so heavily and so hard that every drop stings. The new flesh is delicate, and the bruises ache as they bloom to the surface, staining the pale expanse: it is gasping, its two arms (two arms!) clutched about its naked chest (a chest, filled to the brim with treasures, two lungs, a heart, a heart!), and its two wings (blessed normality!) curve inward to shield it, even as it drops to its knees in the grass and the mud.</p>
<p>It is alone on the hillside, and it aches, for it has never been alone before: it has only ever been one amidst legions, one amidst an ordered unit, and here, in the grass, upon the earth, the loneliness takes its heart (a heart, though, really! what next? what next?) and cleaves it in two, pours salt into its veins, and its sobs are guttural and heaving, wrenched from its throat.</p>
<p>Time passes.</p>
<p>It has never experienced time before, time as a thing that moves, time as a river that washes over its shivering skin, and it has never experienced such cold as this, cold that eats beneath its flesh, burrows into its bones, the only bare semblance of warmth coming in the tears that eke out from beneath its eyelids, so hot on its cheeks it thinks it will burn, it will burn—</p>
<p>It does not burn.</p>
<p>Exhaustion overtakes it, and it falls still in the mud, the filth clinging sticky to its skin, forming as sludge in its feathers.</p>
<p>When the rain stops, and the sun rises, it does not stir.</p>
<p>*     *     *</p>
<p>“Jean,” said a low voice, and Jean-Pierre stirred slightly, raising his head. His mouth was dry, and waking brought him once again to the sickening ebb and flow of the water beneath the damned vessel they were on. His sleep had been fitful, rolling over and over without any space to do so, and he’d barely been asleep for what seemed like a few heavy, black moments before he was being poked at. “Jean, wake up.”</p>
<p>“I’m awake,” Jean-Pierre mumbled, sitting forward, and he felt Asmodeus’ hand cup his cheek as he tugged him forward, out of the awkward bunk Jean-Pierre had been crammed into. “Why did you wake me up?” He sounded tired and plaintive, he knew, but Asmodeus was not deterred: he met Jean-Pierre’s gaze and smiled. “I haven’t slept in—”</p>
<p>“We’re here,” Asmodeus said softly, and Jean-Pierre stumbled in his haste to get out of the bunk.</p>
<p>His clothes were rumpled and he was still in his shoes, falling over himself on unsteady feet, and as the ship rocked beneath their feet on the back of a small swell, he felt himself gag, and hid his mouth against the crook of his elbow.</p>
<p>“I have your case,” Asmodeus said. “Colm is already on deck.”</p>
<p>“He would be,” Jean-Pierre muttered, and Asmodeus clucked his tongue in disapproval, but still he smiled: he always smiled, did Jean-Pierre’s brother. Jean-Pierre thought at times that it was the coldest smile on Earth.</p>
<p>The journey from their cabin – a small recess upon the damnable ship where Jean-Pierre had spent the entirety of their journey from New York, staring into space and vomiting in turns – up to the ship’s upper deck was excruciating, and Jean-Pierre walked with a heavy haze of nausea wrapped around him like a cowl. His stomach was empty of anything but bile: therefore, it was only bile that he tipped down the side of the ship when he reached the deck’s side and vomited.</p>
<p>“Jean-Pierre,” said Asmodeus, but Colm was already behind him, and Jean-Pierre grunted as Colm put his arms around Jean-Pierre’s waist and tipped him over his shoulder, carrying him to the gangplank that led from the ship.</p>
<p>Perhaps he should have been embarrassed, but he wasn’t, not really: he fisted his hands in the fabric of Colm’s shirt and pressed his face against the hard flesh of his brother’s shoulder as Colm moved quickly with him. The nausea lingered even once they were settled on the safe, sturdy ground of the dock, and as they waited for Asmodeus to join them – Colm had swiftly bypassed a great queue of people, smiling and waving them down as he passed. They had been charmed by him: traditionally, people were very charmed by Colm.</p>
<p>“Here,” Colm said softly, and pressed a bottle into Jean-Pierre’s hand, the plastic cool against his fingers and most with condensation. Jean-Pierre drank from it heavily, half-collapsed as he was on top of Asmodeus’ antique chest, his knees up in line with his chest, and leaning into Colm’s side.</p>
<p>Colm was warm, heavy, solid, and Jean-Pierre leaned his sweated brow against the hard line of his waist without shame for the people that turned to glance at them as they passed on the dock. Asmodeus’ trunk was a huge thing, easily big enough for all three of them to sit on if they wanted to, but for now Jean-Pierre settled on it himself with Colm stood beside him, his own case – a leather case, vintage as Asmodeus’ own, though by decades instead of centuries.</p>
<p>They both seemed quite apart from Jean-Pierre’s own case, which was a cheap white plastic affair, and looked quite silly held in one of Asmodeus’ massive hands.</p>
<p>Asmodeus was tall, strapping, handsome: possessed of squared shoulders and a narrow waist, dark skin and finely-chiselled features, he rather resembled a model at the worst of times, but now, descending the gangplank from the ship in the Dublin sunshine, wearing a tight grey suit and a pink shirt open at the neck, he looked ever more so.</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre’s polypropylene suitcase could only detract so much.</p>
<p>“Feel better?” Colm asked softly.</p>
<p>“Mm,” Jean-Pierre hummed. “Just— hungry.”</p>
<p>“You’ve barely eaten in two weeks,” Colm murmured. “I’m not surprised you’re hungry. We’ll get something to eat before we go find the house.”</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre nodded his head, pressing his face into his hands, his elbows against his knees, and stayed like that as Asmodeus stepped toward them. No matter that he was on solid ground, he still felt very much like it was moving underneath him, and he wondered if the nausea would ever <em>cease</em>.</p>
<p>“Better?” asked Asmodeus, and he reached out to touch Jean-Pierre’s hair, touching it where it had come loose from its sweat-soaked bun. Jean-Pierre grunted a sound that was neither an affirmative or a negative, but took the elastic Asmodeus offered him, and reached up to tie it back. “You’re alright, Jean-Pierre. We’re here. No more sailing. Let’s go eat something.”</p>
<p>“I’ve no appetite,” Jean-Pierre mumbled.</p>
<p>“Here,” said Colm.</p>
<p>“Wait, no, you don’t have to—” Jean-Pierre exhaled a breath without meaning to as Colm brushed his knuckles against his cheek, and he felt the nausea, the unsteadiness, the desperate sickness, drain entirely from his body. With the next breath he took in, though still tired, he felt reenergised.</p>
<p>Colm looked quite pale.</p>
<p>“You needn’t have done that,” said Jean-Pierre. “I am no child, unable to withstand the weight of my own feeling.”</p>
<p>“You need to eat,” said Colm, green about his gills as he coughed against the back of his hand, his throat bobbing as he swallowed back the visible urge to vomit. “Let’s go.”</p>
<p>“There’s a taxi waiting for us,” said Asmodeus, smiling his cold smile, and Jean-Pierre couldn’t help but feel a desperate affection for both of his brothers as he stood to his feet, putting one arm on Colm’s shoulder and squeezing even while Asmodeus gestured toward him. “Take your luggage, will you? It doesn’t suit me.”</p>
<p>“I know,” Jean-Pierre murmured, smiling slightly despite himself, and he took the case Asmodeus pushed into his hands.</p>
<p>*     *     *</p>
<p>“What is it?”</p>
<p>“I found him out by the wheat field—”</p>
<p>“What <em>is</em> it?”</p>
<p>“He looked so… I couldn’t leave him, Maman, I couldn’t—"</p>
<p>The voices were heard through new ears, and the owner of them stayed very, very still, digesting the sound, the physicality, of all it now was. It could <em>feel</em> it: each sound exiting a throat, moving forth with a breath to fill its sails, and the sound expanding outward, stopping where it reached the dirt ground and the thickly padded hay, but bouncing where it hit the hard wood of the building wall. <em>Sound</em>: this was sound.</p>
<p>Sound, before now, had been but a theory, a concept: sound, now, was real.</p>
<p>Before now, a voice was a Voice, and such things as words came imparted heavy in the very mind, understanding instantaneous. Communication happened to <em>other</em> beings: angels Knew, for that was their purpose.</p>
<p>Now, it Knew nothing, and knew even less, and it heard the soft whimper that came from between its dry lips, hissing over its dry tongue. The sound was pathetic, lowly, and it tasted its shame, felt it ring within its body.</p>
<p>It lifts its head, feels the pain that suffuses its very form, and it exhales, staring forward.</p>
<p>“My God<em>,”</em> whispered the human before it, and it watched distantly as the human moved its hands, two fingers tracing a line from its forehead down to its chest, and then from shoulder to shoulder. What it meant, the angel could not possibly know, and it stared down at its own hand, which was caked with mud. The skin was red-raw beneath its blanket of muck, and the hand, as he regarded it, shivered.</p>
<p>“Come,” said the voice of the other one, which was lower, and it felt the touch against its cheek, and it cried out, keened. The touch was so <em>warm</em>, and more than that, it was the touch of <em>life</em>, a soul under that warm skin, a soul— “Oh, hey, hey,” the voice said, and it said it in the angel’s ear, for the angel was wrapped tight around its body, sobbing against the speaker’s chest.</p>
<p>“Jules—”</p>
<p>“He’s fine, he’s fine,” Jules said, and the angel desperately curled its wings around them, pressed its face closer to the breast of the one called <em>Jules</em>, but it was not the same: it was used to being in amongst the natural graces of a thousand angels, a hundred thousand, and this was but one human soul, just one. “He barely weighs anything,” he said, and when the angel felt the pang of <em>sympathy</em>, the new emotion all but knocked it down, its knees buckling. “Oh, hey,” Jules said, and his hands alighted firm on the angel’s waist, gripping it to keep it upright, draped as it was about his neck. “Alright, here…”</p>
<p>The angel didn’t let go as the human Jules gently pushed it backward, bringing it down to sit upon the hay again, and it heaved in gasps of air, feeling the instinct although the practice was <em>new</em>, and it looked, for the first time, at his face.</p>
<p>Jules <em>was</em> a human: a man, perhaps approaching thirty years of age. His cheeks were dusky and tanned with hard work in the sun, and his hair was long and messily cut, drawn back from his face, tied at his neck and put back behind his ears. His nose had been broken before, the angel thought: it had seen humans with crooked noses, like this one, but never from down here, beneath the firmament, only from <em>Heaven</em>.</p>
<p>It had never been to Earth before.</p>
<p>It reached up, touching Jules’ cheek with its palm, feeling the heat, feeling the regular flow of his blood in his veins, and it shuddered in an uncertain breath. Jules had deep brown eyes, and it could see in their depths concern, concern and <em>sympathy</em>, and curiosity… The emotions flooded over it like a wave, and it closed its own eyes, gripping tightly at Jules’ shoulder. Their bodies were flush together, and the angel could not stand to pull away, but it heard the noise of the other human, and it looked at her.</p>
<p>She was older, it thought. It saw in her face the same dusky skin, the same shape in the mouth, and it <em>felt</em> the similarity in her blood, and his blood. This was Jules’ <em>mother</em>…</p>
<p>It remembered the first of them, Eve, remembered her heavy with child, and holding the first of them against her breast…</p>
<p>It looked to Jules, and Jules smiled at it. It was a small smile, and it watched his lips curve up to form it.</p>
<p>It hesitated. It felt the face wrapped around it, felt it, and it forced its mouth to move, feeling the strange pull of unfamiliar muscles (muscles! muscles! it had never needed muscles before!), at its cheeks, at its lips…</p>
<p>Jules’ smile deepened, and his gaze came from the angel’s face to its wings, which are… They had <em>feathers</em>, now, and the wings sprout from between its shoulder blades, expanding outward. It had never had feathers, or shoulders, before, never, it never… The feathers were a golden-brown, and Jules reached up, his fingers brushing against the soft down, and the angel gasped at the strange touch, the strange sensation.</p>
<p>“It could be dangerous,” the mother said. It could feel the anxiety radiating from her, and it leaned closer to the other, feeling his quiet confidence, his <em>warmth</em>. This emotion, this too was new: <em>pleasure</em>.</p>
<p>“I don’t think he is,” Jules said softly, fingers still brushing through the feathers, and the angel’s eyes fluttered closed, its face falling against the human’s breast once more, its nose pressed as tight as it could be against the rough wool of its vestments, its fingers gripping tightly at the fabric. “He’s just frightened, and scared. What happened?”</p>
<p>It didn’t respond, not until Jules’ fingers came away from its wing, and instead touched against its chin, pushing it up to look at him. It stared into Jules’ eyes, into his beseeching expression.</p>
<p>“Can you talk?” he asked quietly, not unkindly.</p>
<p>It had never talked before. It knew only the Word, knew <em>instructions</em>, had put forward messages, but it had never wrapped lips and teeth and a tongue about its speech, and made it audible. But the human Jules had <em>asked</em> it, and were it silent, that would be a lie, would it not? It <em>could </em>talk, it thought: it had a tongue, and lips, and a larynx, and a voice…</p>
<p>“Yes,” it said. The sound was soft and mellifluous, though slightly hoarse, and it made Jules smile again, wider this time. It liked that smile. <em>Liked</em>. It liked! <em>Liked!</em> “Fell,” it said. “Was…”</p>
<p>It trailed off.</p>
<p>To Fall was the great punishment: to Fall was to err, and be found judged.</p>
<p>“Did nothing,” it said, overtaken in its own perplexity.</p>
<p>Twin confusion radiated from Jules and the mother alike, and it closed its eyes, the emotion uncomfortable where it touched its consciousness.</p>
<p>“What are you?” Jules asked. His hand, once more, trailed through its feathers, pressing into the down this time, and it clung to him tightly, not daring to let go. His voice was full of wonder: so too was his heart, and the wonderment made it think of blessed creation. It kept its eyes closed, clutching all the harder at this human, at this man, at this <em>soul</em>. It felt such sorrow it could scarcely stand it, and it felt as if it weighed it down.</p>
<p>“Fallen,” it said again, its voice dull even to its own ears. “<em>Fallen</em>.”</p>
<p>"Oh," Jules said, as if he understood, although he could not, he mustn't: his hand curled in the angel's hair (hair? hair!), clutched at it, and drew it closer. He felt the angel's sorrow, it thought, and took such pity on it, such pity. "I'm sorry," he murmured, and the angel didn’t hear as he went on, talking to the woman, the mother, perhaps talking to the angel itself. It heard nothing but the slow beat of the heart beneath its ear, and without really meaning to, the tears a hot and sudden streak on its cheeks, it began to weep.</p>
<p>*     *     *</p>
<p>“… a roast and a pint of milk,” said the waitress, who was named Rosetta, although she was wearing Sandra’s name badge ever since Sandra had gone to work in the med supply factory to keep guys from looking her up on Facebook, and set the plate and pint glass in front of Colm, who gave her a winning smile. She smiled back, even though she didn’t usually smile at men, didn’t really want to encourage them – she didn’t know why she felt like he was safe, why he was alright, but for some reason, she felt that he was.</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre reached up and rubbed carefully at the edge of his temple, trying to work away the threatening headache building there. Two weeks in ship’s cabin had left him isolated from people, who all felt their feelings so very <em>loudly</em>, so openly, and all at once, in a half-full restaurant in the early afternoon, it was overwhelming, now.</p>
<p>“Are you sure I can’t get you anything else?” Rosetta asked Jean-Pierre. “We do have other vegan options, if it’s that.”</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre looked at the rosiness in her cheeks, the set of her mouth, her wide eyes. He had evidently been looking at her for too long, because he felt the wave of uncertainty come from her, and then he heard Asmodeus say, as if through a wall of water, “He’s okay. Thank you, Miss.”</p>
<p>Rosetta nodded, walking back toward the till, and Jean-Pierre stared down at the fruit platter spread out in front of him on the table: melon, pineapple, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, oranges, even a few pieces of starfruit.</p>
<p>“Do you think if I ask, they’ll have dragonfruit?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p>
<p>“We walked past twenty-two restaurants before we saw one with a fruit platter,” Asmodeus said mildly, taking a sip of his tea. “So I doubt it.”</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre picked up a piece of starfruit, putting it in his mouth and chewing, feeling the acid sweetness burst on his tongue, and although they both did their best to hide their relief, he could see some of the tension go out of Asmodeus’ shoulders, and see Colm’s clenched jaw relax.</p>
<p>“Vegan options,” Jean-Pierre said mildly.</p>
<p>“Dublin’s very cosmopolitan these days,” Colm murmured, giving him an easy smile, and Jean-Pierre smiled back, and focused himself on his food. The nausea had passed quickly, once Colm had taken it for himself, and he ate with gusto, albeit a gusto Jean-Pierre tried his best to tune out, as he did the slightly overpowering smell of the gravy.</p>
<p>Asmodeus had just ordered a salad, like he usually did when given the option, and Jean-Pierre watched him pick through for the cherry tomatoes, spearing them with his fork and dousing them in the vinaigrette before he ate them, one after the other, before he’d eat the rest.</p>
<p>Colm, on the other hand, ate from his plate in a clockwise motion, taking a morsel from each section as he went around it: a piece of beef, then some carrots, then broccoli, then potato, then Yorkshire pudding, then back to the beef… One could set a clock by the way Colm ate from his plate.</p>
<p>He felt the emotion swell in his chest, a deep and warm affection for the two men beside him. Colm said, in an idle tone, “We love you too, Jean.”</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre smiled, but his nose wrinkled as Colm picked up his pint glass and began swallowing down mouthful after mouthful of thick, white milk.</p>
<p>“I don’t know how you can do that,” Jean-Pierre muttered.</p>
<p>“We don’t all have your delicate constitution,” said Colm cheerfully.</p>
<p>Asmodeus reached out, plucking a grape from the side of Jean-Pierre’s platter.</p>
<p>“Hey!”</p>
<p>“It’s a sharing platter, Jean-Pierre,” rumbled Asmodeus, but as payment, he offered Jean-Pierre his fork, speared with the last of the cherry tomatoes, and Jean-Pierre laughed as he took it.</p>
<p>*     *     *</p>
<p>The angel shivered as Jules gently dragged the cloth over its skin, scrubbing at the flesh before he rinsed the cloth once more. The water was brown with muck by the time his work was complete, and he was swift about dragging the towel over its skin to dry it.</p>
<p>“Good that you didn’t get your feathers dirty,” he said quietly. The mother – Marguerite – had gone back inside, and they were alone inside a small hay barn. It could hear the sound of animals, now that it listened for them, and felt their signatures behind the wooden partition: two cows, each lain down to sleep for the night. “Are you in pain?”</p>
<p>“Do not know,” it said, because it was true.</p>
<p>Jules gave it a long, long look, and then he gently set the towel aside, reaching out and touching its feathers once more, absently, like he could scarcely stop himself. Immediately, it was forward again, in the human’s lap, its face buried in his neck, and it heard him sigh softly.</p>
<p>“Can you put these away?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Don’t understand,” it said.</p>
<p>“These,” Jules said, and his fingers carded through soft plumage on each side, making the angel sigh, its wings fluttering with quiet satisfaction. “Can you hide them?” It thought about this for some time. <em>Hiding</em>. Nothing hid, once upon a time: the animals of the world lived in harmony, and Eve and Adam hid nothing, for they had no shame.</p>
<p>So much had changed, since then, and yet for the angel, <em>then</em> and <em>now</em> were so recently just a matter of perspective, the direction in which one pointed one’s gaze.</p>
<p>Hide them.</p>
<p>It felt its wings, drawing them inward, folding against its back, and then, a little more. It was difficult to describe the sensation, precisely, but it felt them fold in tighter, <em>inward</em>, and then there was nothing, just a blank expanse of rain-bruised skin. Jules’ hands slid over the bare flesh, feeling the blades of its shoulders, the back of its neck, and it clutched all the tighter at him.</p>
<p>“Do you have a name?” he asked.</p>
<p>“No,” it said. “We don’t have names.”</p>
<p>“There are names,” Jules said slowly, cautiously. “Michael, Raphael, Gabriel…”</p>
<p>It was still. How to explain? <em>Could</em> it explain?</p>
<p>“Not…” It stopped. It had never been an individual before, and it felt as if it had been cleaved away from its natural place, strangely empty when it drew away from the human’s breast, and it did not <em>want</em> to draw away. “Not <em>me</em>,” it said. The very word felt like a blasphemy, but what more did blasphemy matter anymore?</p>
<p>It could not Fall a second time.</p>
<p>“You need one,” Jules said.</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Because everyone has a name.”</p>
<p>“Not… me.”</p>
<p>“You <em>need</em> to,” the human said, and he reached up, gently drawing his fingers through the angel’s hair. It leaned into the touch, its eyes fluttering closed once more, and it felt the thumb that gently played against its scalp, the warmth of hard-worked, calloused fingers, a scarred palm.</p>
<p>“Where… is this?” it asked.</p>
<p>“Outside Chartres,” the human said. “France. Did you fall from Heaven?”</p>
<p>It said nothing, but its fingers gripped, without its permission, tighter at the human’s blouse.</p>
<p>“What… year?” it asked. It knew how time worked, it thought. Seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days, and days… into the rest. It <em>knew</em> them. But—</p>
<p>“1732,” Jules said. Once, it Knew. The dates coincided with events, and there were so many different calendars, so many different philosophies of time, but it used to know what events coincided with what dates, and yet its mind was but a blank expanse, so empty, cut off as it is from the body of knowledge of the Host. It Knew…</p>
<p>But it didn’t, anymore.</p>
<p>“You choose it,” it said.</p>
<p>“I can’t choose it,” Jules said, sounding almost scandalised, and it felt the shift in its face as its brow furrows of its own accord.</p>
<p>“Why not?”</p>
<p>“Because— Because it’s <em>your</em> name.” That stung. The <em>your</em>, in the singular, the dreadful singular, the individual: it was <em>just one</em>, now, instead of legion. How could this be natural, be normal, to be but one body, one mind, one… <em>soul</em>? A soul! What a dreadful thing to be cursed with!</p>
<p>“You name one another all the time,” it said tightly, wishing it could crawl into its own skin and be hidden there. “Heard about it. You give one another names, and assignations, and diminutives, even.”</p>
<p>Jules stared down at it, apparently struck dumb by this retort.  “But—”</p>
<p>“You say <em>I</em> need a name, but now you will not choose one. Make your decision one way or the other.” There is a moment’s pause, and then Jules let out a low, rich sound, breathless and quiet. It leaned back slightly to look at his face, at the smile dragging at his lips, at his teeth. It liked that sound: <em>laughter</em>, it was laughter. “You laugh at… me,” it said, feeling its lips twist into a frown.</p>
<p>“You’re stubborn as an ass,” Jules replied.</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>“Jean,” he decided. “Or… No, Pierre. Or— I can’t choose. There are too many names, all of them too common!”</p>
<p>“Jean-Pierre,” it said.</p>
<p>“That’s too common.”</p>
<p>“You said needed a name.”</p>
<p>Jules sighed, and again, it felt that trickle of warm indulgence, of fondness, the emotion that played soft over its skin. It ached, it thought: it could feel the shift of bruises beneath the flesh, the blood seeping beneath the tender skin…</p>
<p>“As an <em>ass</em>,” he said again. “Alright, Jean-Pierre: that’s that. How old are you?”</p>
<p>It considered this question. “Debatable,” it said.</p>
<p>“How can it be debatable?”</p>
<p>“Humans debate,” it said.</p>
<p>Jules sighed, still smiling. “Yes, but they don’t debate <em>age</em>: age is a matter of facts, one way or the other. You are the age that you are.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>“So, how old <em>are</em> you?”</p>
<p>“Unknown.”</p>
<p>Again, the laughter.</p>
<p>“How old do I… <em>appear</em>?” it asked.</p>
<p>“Late twenties,” Jules said, after a moment’s thought.</p>
<p>“Very well,” Jean-Pierre replied. “Then I am late twenties.”</p>
<p>“<em>No</em>,” Jules said. “You need to pick a year, and a date you were born.”</p>
<p>“<em>Why</em>?” it asked defeatedly, astonished by the petulance in its own voice. It had never felt like this before: quietly defiant and… annoyed. It was annoyed, irritated. There was a heaviness at its eyes, and even as it mused on the thought, it felt its mouth open unbidden, feels strange, thick air pass from its throat through its mouth. Immediately, it frowned in perplexity.</p>
<p>“That was a yawn,” Jules said.</p>
<p>“Am tired?”</p>
<p>“Yes, I expect so.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>“Come,” Jules said, and Jean-Pierre disobeyed. Was this what disobedience felt like? It felt good. Perhaps it <em>did</em> deserve to Fall.</p>
<p>It lingered in the hay as Jules rose to his feet, and Jules frowned down at it, his eyebrows furrowing. It looked up at him, unmoving, its mouth set in a thin, loose line. “Fine,” Jules said, and then he bent, and <em>lifted</em>.</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre let out a noise of surprise as arms came beneath its legs and its back, lifting it with ease from the hay bale and taking it outside, into the stinging cold of the early morning air, still dark, still with moisture thick in it. The black night was beginning to give way to red on the horizon. It did not struggle, however, as Jules brought it under the low stoop and into another building that adjoined the first, a house – a cottage.</p>
<p>“Jules,” said Marguerite. “Wh— Oh.” She stared at Jean-Pierre for a long moment, her mouth fallen open, and it felt confusion, fear, uncertainty, and then a curious calm. It was as if it was all smoothed away in her mind, and it stared at her for a long moment, not entirely comprehending as she crossed her arms over her chest, and nodded toward the wooden slats to the edge of the room, where a dog, wiry and brown and thick with fur, tapped its tail against the sheepskin beneath it.</p>
<p>Jules carried the angel to the bed, putting it down there, and he reached for a blanket, throwing it over its body.</p>
<p>“No—” it protested as the human draws away, feeling the dreadful cold, the dreadful <em>loneliness</em>, of the cleaved-in-two feeling set into place again.</p>
<p>“Lie down,” Jules said, and he patted the wooden board beside the angel’s breast. The dog wriggled forward, curling against its side. It was not the same as Jules, but still, life burst beneath its skin, and Jean-Pierre came closer, wrapping one arm about the animal and pressing its nose against the back of its furry neck. It didn’t smell like Jules does, like sweat and hay and wheat. It smelled <em>different</em>: this was how dogs smelled. “This is Anicroche,” Jules said. “She’ll keep you warm.”</p>
<p>It held the dog, felt her tail wag against its calf beneath the blanket, felt her <em>warmth</em>, and it pressed its head against her fur, feeling its softness against his skin.</p>
<p>“Where are you going?” it asked, miserably.</p>
<p>“To work,” Jules replied. “There is labour that needs completing.”</p>
<p>“For how long?”</p>
<p>“Would you know how long <em>how long</em> was, if I told you?”</p>
<p>It paused a moment. The hand touched its hair once more, and it sighed, not opening its eyes. “No,” it muttered.</p>
<p>“Soon,” Jules said, and stood to his feet. It felt him draw further away, heard him talk in hushed tones with Marguerite, felt the separation as the two souls exited the cottage, and went outside. The dog remained.</p>
<p>The dog’s heart beat faster than Jules’ had, and her mind was a flurry of short bursts of emotion: <em>new thing, curious, love, warm, friend, food?, food want, new thing, warm, warm</em>—</p>
<p>It sighed, and it felt the dog’s mind begin to slow as she wriggled close against its chest, seeking its warmth. The angel allowed it, and it felt the dog’s drowsiness, felt her mind drift and slow…</p>
<p>This was sleep.</p>
<p>*     *     *</p>
<p>Jean-Pierre heard the click of the door as Colm stepped out from the café, and heard his growl of irritation. “Christ, Jean, how <em>old</em> are you?”</p>
<p>“As old as you are,” Jean-Pierre mumbled against Asmodeus’ neck. “To the day.”</p>
<p>“You’re seriously going to carry him?” Colm demanded.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t bother me,” said Asmodeus, his tone easy, smooth, and mild: Jean-Pierre’s legs were wrapped around his middle and his arms around his neck, and one of Asmodeus’ hand kept a steadying grip under Jean-Pierre’s thigh, keeping him in place as they walked along. “The house is scarce twenty minutes’ walk from here.”</p>
<p>“You spoil him,” snapped Colm.</p>
<p>“I spoil both of you,” was Asmodeus’ reply, and Jean-Pierre heard Colm’s sound of frustration, but did not feel the wave of it, because Asmodeus drowned it out.</p>
<p>Asmodeus was not like humans or other angels, nor like anyone else besides: he was a pit of lacking feeling, a great, black spot on what might be called the radar of Colm and Jean-Pierre’s empathies, and in this blackness, now, Jean-Pierre felt comfort beyond measure, for it drowned out the cacophony of the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Pressed against this nothingness, being as it was a void that Jean-Pierre called brother, and loved beyond measure, he slept.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>They walked in silence, and Colm felt the energy of the city wash over him, felt the emotion of the people passing them by, the fleeting thoughts that radiated off them as they went about their days, their lives full to the brim with the complexities of humanity.</p><p>Dublin had changed a lot, since last he’d been in the city – in a century, so many buildings had disappeared, and yet so many more had sprung up in their place, the cityscape showing all manner of glass-fronted high-rises, shining in the light.</p><p>With the Friday afternoon, there was a relaxed energy in the air, people winding down after the hectic natures of their work weeks, getting ready to go out for the evening, or readying their plans for the weekend to come. The streets weren’t quite so busy with people as they would be once three o’clock came and went, and Colm idly wondered if he might go into the city centre around that time, bask in the presence of all those people—</p><p>But he <em>was</em> tired, and while there were nights when a crowd would give him all the energy he needed, after nearly three weeks on the move, all he wanted now was to settle to something quiet and peaceful.</p><p>The drive from College Station to New York had taken five days, because neither Colm or Jean liked to be stuck in the truck for too many hours at a time, and they’d taken frequent breaks to go for walks or just socialise with people in towns along the way, and that had been all well and good, but the actual ship?</p><p>Two weeks was a pretty good turnaround, he supposed, compared to how they used to be. He’d won a bet against Jean, which was why they were sailing at all instead of flying all their stuff over, and he’d regretted that two days in – and he’d <em>told</em> Jean, told him he should just go ahead without them and fly the rest of the way, but Jean honoured his bets.</p><p>Colm felt somewhat less regretful now, seeing Jean-Pierre held in Asmodeus’ arms like a toddler, completely asleep, and Asmodeus, of course, wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed, didn’t even seem to notice the people that looked his way, or seemed curious.</p><p>“Did you enjoy the cruise?” Asmodeus asked in his mild, inoffensive way: his voice was deep but too smooth to be called gravelly, and not for the first time, Colm wished he didn’t choose to speak English with such a clipped accent. It was bad enough that people looked between Colm, with his thick Kerryman’s brogue, and Jean-Pierre, with his soft-spoken Parisian lilt, and didn’t understand that they were brothers – Asmodeus, sounding for all the world like an Englishman, no matter that he existed long before that particular plague was unleashed upon the world, didn’t see as though he should be related to <em>anybody</em>.</p><p>Of all the angels across the world, each Fallen from what had once been the Host, Asmodeus was different to everybody: there wasn’t an angel alive, after all, that felt so blank and empty as Asmodeus did, no matter how much angels like Colm and Jean-Pierre reached out to him.</p><p>It wasn’t that he didn’t <em>feel</em>.</p><p>Asmodeus had explained that before, that he did feel, that he had emotions – it was just that he didn’t project them like most did, just that they were shielded, and distant even from himself.</p><p>“Colm,” Asmodeus said, and Colm glanced at him, remembering all at once that he’d asked a question.</p><p>“I did,” Colm said. “I didn’t realise— he told me boats made him sick, but I didn’t realise he meant <em>that</em> sick.”</p><p>He should have known. He and Jean-Pierre had known each other two centuries now, had spent those two hundred years living in each other’s pockets, when they weren’t pursuing respective jobs – he <em>should</em> have known.</p><p>“Jean-Pierre isn’t a seabird,” Asmodeus said, and then smiled to himself as though it was a joke. Colm pressed his lips together, trying to push down the guilt still tangled in his belly. “You know for next time.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm muttered.</p><p>“Here,” said Asmodeus, and Colm followed the gesture of his hand, and his mouth fell open.</p><p>It was a semi-detached house at the end of a terrace, and because of the awkward shape of the road, it had been given almost twice the size of garden that the other houses in the row had, and it had no driveway. Coming to the front gate, Colm hesitated for a second, his suitcase in one hand and Jean-Pierre’s in the other, and he looked at the hugely overgrown meadow of a garden, the grass and flowers a higher than Colm’s waist, at the battered old shed that was rotting almost to pieces, down the alley between the side of the house and the fence that led down to the back garden, which looked to be even bigger than the front.</p><p>There were blackberry brambles growing on the shared fence with next door, and a few trees dotted around messily – a pear tree, a plum tree, and in the back garden, Colm could feel the familiar weight of a huge apple tree, one that had been here even before this particular estate had gone up, and a gooseberry bush, too.</p><p>“Go on,” said Asmodeus behind him, and Colm looked back to see the smile on his face. Normally, Asmodeus’ smiles were a little bit cold, the feeling not quite reaching his eyes, but now his smile was warm, and Colm could see the affection in it.</p><p>He always picked houses for Colm and Jean-Pierre, no matter that Asmodeus would always be there with them. Colm wondered, sometimes, what a house would look like, if Asmodeus picked it for himself.</p><p> Leaving the suitcases on the doorstep, which was covered over by a wooden awning that looked viable to snap off in a sudden wind, unless perhaps it was being held in place by the ivy that grew thick up the house’s outer wall, he unlocked the door with the keys he’d taken out of Asmodeus’ proffered pocket, and moved inside.</p><p>The house was narrowly built, obviously selected for its garden more than anything else, and Colm moved down the narrow corridor into the combined sitting room and kitchen, which was dominated by a huge fireplace, where turf was merrily burning on the flame.</p><p>“You cut turf?” he called up the stairs as he heard Asmodeus ascend them, creaking under his and Jean-Pierre’s weight.</p><p>“I <em>bought</em> turf,” was the retort, and Colm laughed softly as he stepped through the kitchen, pushing open the door that led into the narrow corridor. Under the stairs was a decent pantry space, and then there was a porch where one wall was made of some awful plexiglass shite, and mould was already growing on thin wall underneath it, no matter that the smell of bleach was pungent in the little room.</p><p>Upstairs was a better affair – Asmodeus had given himself the larger of the bedrooms up the first flight, and Jean-Pierre the smaller, because when Jean-Pierre was in too large a room he complained it got cold too easily, and another set of stairs built over the bathroom led up to the attic.</p><p>“I gave you the attic bedroom,” Asmodeus said, coming from his own bedroom, and not from Jean-Pierre’s – Asmodeus had got their names engraved on brass plates some time in the late 1800s, and installing them was the first thing he ever did upon getting them a new house – and Colm frowned.</p><p>“Did you just put him in your bed?”</p><p>“He didn’t send sheets for his,” Asmodeus said. “When he sent the furniture ahead.”</p><p>“Well, that’s his fucking fault, if he just used his head for once, he’d—”</p><p>“Colm,” Asmodeus said, and Colm clenched his jaw as he shut his mouth, watching the other man tug the door closed behind him with a quiet click. “You like the house?”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s grand,” Colm murmured. “Needs some work.”</p><p>“I’d never pick a house for you that didn’t,” Asmodeus said softly, and Colm wanted to be pleased, but he felt tired and ill-at-ease, and perhaps it showed in his face, because Asmodeus reached for him. The first time Asmodeus had come across him, Colm had thought he was something from the infernal dimensions, such a black hole of feeling as he seemed, but when Asmodeus had first touched him, Colm had realised him for the home he was, had recalled all at once that he had felt that little, once, and been that empty, that distant.</p><p>Before he Fell.</p><p>Colm leaned into Asmodeus as the other angel hugged him tightly, felt the weight of Asmodeus’ sculpted chin on top of his head, felt the heat of Asmodeus’ body in stark opposition to the cold weight of what could not be called his soul.</p><p>“He’s alright,” Asmodeus murmured against the top of Colm’s hair. “And he isn’t angry with you. He just needs to sleep – you do too, I’d wager.”</p><p>“I’m going to start on the yard there.”</p><p>“It’s to your liking?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm murmured. “Yeah, it’s good. Space for a veg patch, a good-sized greenhouse… It’s good.”</p><p>“It’s the hardest thing to find in a city,” Asmodeus said softly “A garden big enough for your and Jean-Pierre’s tastes.”</p><p>Colm leaned back from Asmodeus, looking up at his face. “We could have lived in a village,” he pointed out, and he watched Asmodeus’ unchanging expression, not revealing anything.</p><p>“You’re happier in the city,” Asmodeus murmured. “You and Jean-Pierre both.”</p><p>“And you?”</p><p>Asmodeus shrugged his shoulders. “I’m happy anywhere,” he said, and Colm wished he knew enough to disagree with him, or to agree with him – he wished he knew what Asmodeus really <em>did</em> like, when it came to the mundane. Jean-Pierre asked him questions all the time, but Asmodeus always said he had no particular preference in any direction when it was a decision that would be shared by Colm and Jean, and Colm wished he could tell when he was lying and when he wasn’t, like he could with anybody else alive.</p><p>“The fireplace wasn’t here when I bought the house,” Asmodeus said as he led the way down the stairs. “I brought it from some old ruin of a cottage, rebuilt it brick by brick. I like a real fireplace.”</p><p>Colm smiled slightly to himself, wondering not for the first time if Asmodeus could read his thoughts no matter that Colm couldn’t read his, and followed the other man into the kitchen, watching as he put the kettle on.</p><p>“House needs work,” Colm said. “The back porch I’ll strip out and rebuild entirely. It’s shitework, as is, more damp than brick. Put in a proper porch at the front as well, instead of that awning – need to reinsulate the place before Jean-Pierre puts down the warding.</p><p>“The guttering I’ll strip out and use for something else, fix in new pipework to collect – that roof is good and has a shallow angle, I like that. I’ll reinforce it, of course, but I’ll put in some solar panelling, and that little balcony attached to the attic bedroom, I’ll widen that space and put a ladder in for Jean. You attached to the ivy?”</p><p>“Not particularly,” Asmodeus said, taking down some mugs. He’d moved all the furniture in while Jean and Colm had been driving up from Texas, and come back to meet them for the cruise. Colm had thought he would try to convince Jean-Pierre out of it, but he hadn’t – Asmodeus was like that. Very rarely tried to convince anybody one way or the other, except on certain issues. Colm almost hated it. “You want a trellis?”</p><p>“Yeah, for honeysuckle. I like that, in summer, and Jean puts the flowers in his tea. I’ll start on that meadow first, then start turning the soil. The earth any good?”</p><p>“I don’t really know,” Asmodeus murmured. “Not really my area of expertise. Is it important if it’s not?”</p><p>“No, I can make it good,” Colm said, and hesitated, his voice catching thick in his throat, before he said, “Thanks, Asmodeus. You always put a lot of thought into houses for us – it does mean a lot. Just wish sometimes you’d think about what you wanted too.”</p><p>“I’m going to take a lie down,” Asmodeus said softly, passing Colm the second mug of tea. “And all I really want is for you two to be happy.”</p><p>Colm, lacking the energy to argue, stepped out of the house, and began introducing himself to the neighbours.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre turned over in bed, groaning into the pillows underneath him as the noise from outside sailed through the window. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep for, but evidently, he’d been asleep for long enough that Colm had had the chance to borrow from one of their neighbours some sort of lawn strimmer, and Jean-Pierre could hear the loud rotor of its engine as he worked.</p><p>Groggily, he raised his head, and he looked around the room, at the finely-made, mahogany furniture, each wooden surface beautifully carved with complicated but lovingly appointed Arabic poetry, at the frosted mirrors hanging in a dazzling array against one wall, at the black silk sheets he was lying on.</p><p>This was <em>not</em> Jean-Pierre’s bedroom.</p><p>Asmodeus rejected almost all forms of technology if he could have work with enchanted objects instead, and subsequently, his room didn’t even have any electrical sockets in it, but instead had lamps made of a firestone Jean-Pierre didn’t remember the name of, and every space against the walls that wasn’t filled by furniture was filled by books piled on top of one another. They’d probably create quite a good sound insulation on their own, were it not for the fact that the windows had cheap single glazing – Jean-Pierre knew that Colm had already written <em>that</em> on his to-do list – and didn’t close properly, meaning that the sound from outside sailed right in.</p><p>He waited for a few minutes, futilely hoping that Colm would <em>stop</em>, but the rumble and clatter of the strimmer went on and on and on, making Jean-Pierre’s skull feel like it was liable to crumple inward under the pressure of it, and Jean-Pierre made a sound of irritation, pulling himself to his feet.</p><p>Asmodeus had pulled off his trainers but left him in the rest of his clothes, and Jean-Pierre fisted a hand in Asmodeus’ silk top sheet before remembering how horrible and thin Asmodeus’ sheets were, then stumbling, rubbing at his eyes, across the unfamiliar corridor, dragging a quilted blanket off of the seat of the chair in his bedroom before stumbling down the stairs.</p><p>As he clumsily dragged the blanket around his shoulders, he came into the main room downstairs, which – to Asmodeus’ credit – was warm and cosy, the walls painted a creamy, cheerful yellow, and the sofas made of a plush red fabric that looked soft indeed to the touch.</p><p>Asmodeus was reading on one of them, and he didn’t say a word to Jean, wordlessly raising one arm and letting Jean-Pierre fall and crumple against his side.</p><p>“Make him <em>stop</em>,” Jean-Pierre groaned. “He’s making too much noise.”</p><p>“Mm,” Asmodeus agreed, his gaze focused on the book in his hand, his reading glasses carefully pushed up the hard bridge of his nose – near-sightedness, it seemed to Jean, was Asmodeus’ only physical flaw. “And if he didn’t make any noise, you would only complain about the state of the yard when you woke up.”</p><p>As Asmodeus’ arm settled back around his shoulders, pulling Jean-Pierre a little closer, it made an uncomfortable pressure on his back, and Jean-Pierre let out a sharp gasp of pain.</p><p>Immediately, Asmodeus turned away from his book, looking down at Jean-Pierre over the crescent shapes of his spectacle lenses, his lips curled in a concerned frown. Jean-Pierre tried to ignore it, looking into the fire as he rolled his shoulders, attempting to work some of the painful stiffness out of them, and Asmodeus pressed his thumb between his shoulder blades, <em>hard</em>: it was at once a relief and a new pain, and Jean-Pierre let out another sound of pain, wincing.</p><p>“Jean-Pierre,” Asmodeus said softly. “When did you last—”</p><p>“<em>Shut up</em>,” Jean-Pierre snapped, and wrapped the blanket more tightly around himself, pushing a pillow against Asmodeus’ thigh and laying his head on it. Asmodeus hesitated for a second before he stroked through Jean-Pierre’s hair, the touch gentle and featherlight.</p><p>“Tonight,” he said softly, and Jean-Pierre gritted his teeth, trying to push back the pain even as humiliation made itself known, but didn’t argue.</p><p>“Asmodeus, <em>please</em>, I can’t sleep with all that sound.”</p><p>Asmodeus’ hand curled more solidly in Jean-Pierre’s hair, and Jean felt the soothing weight seep out from his fingers and curl under his skin, dissipating inside him like the warm thrill of a strong drink – or, at least, Jean-Pierre assumed so. He couldn’t digest alcohol, himself.</p><p>Sleep settled over him properly now, warm and wonderful, and it was the good, <em>deep</em> sleep that sank right into your bones, made you feel like you were being bathed in blackness.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“You need to eat something,” Marguerite said, and Jean-Pierre looked at the small bowl set before it, pressed into its hands. Guilt tangled in its belly, and it thought of Famine, thought of…</p><p>“You need this,” it said. “I take food from your mouths.”</p><p>Marguerite sighed, putting her hands upon her hips and looking at it very sternly indeed. “We shall make do,” she insisted.</p><p>Stubborn as an ass, Jean-Pierre’s mind repeated, and it looked down to the bowl. It took up the spoon, and it brought a spoonful of the dark brown stew to its mouth, tasting it hesitantly. It was warm, but not too hot, and it tasted of salt, and sweetness. Marguerite handed it a slice of bread, and it took it, using it to soak up some of the stew, as it had watched Marguerite do herself. It tasted pleasant, good. It knew the orders of vegetables, pulses, fruits, beans. It was not as Eden was, once, but there were greater varieties now, so many to keep track of.</p><p>It drew up another spoonful, tasted the tastes individually: cabbage, aubergine, lentil, salt, thyme…</p><p>Marguerite watched it until it finished the bowl, and it handed it back to her, but it did not stand. There was some strange emotion new to it, and it lingered on the air between them, similar to shame, and it took it in, digested it, attempted to categorise it. It was uncomfortable. It was… embarrassed.</p><p>“I… embarrass you?” it asked, the words unfamiliar on its tongue.</p><p>She turned to look at it, her skirts shifting as she moved. Her hair was tied up and away from her shoulders, in some sort of complicated bun, and it reached up, touching its own hair, which came down about its shoulders, tickling the bare skin.</p><p>She moved across the room, opening the bench upon which she had been sitting, and she removed a worn chemise, holding it out to it. It took the blouse, examining it, and at her expectant glance, it hesitated, uncertain.</p><p>“Put it on,” she said. When it peered up at her, perplexed, she added emphatically, “You’re naked.”</p><p>“Oh,” it said, and it looked down at its body, at white flesh marred all over with dark bruises, blooms of red and purple and blue beneath the skin. Adam and Eve, in the Garden, knew shame, and thus covered themselves…</p><p>It drew the blouse over its head, awkwardly and uncertainly, and it heard her let out a noise, coming forward and crouching beside it. She drew the blouse from its head once more, and guided its arms through the sleeves of the chemise, settling it neatly over its head, before she began to do up the lacing on the front. It looked down at her hands, so deft and fast, where its own were slow and clumsy, and felt a distant wonder.</p><p>“Breeches, too,” she said firmly. “We shall have to get you some shoes. This will do for now, but I’ll make for you a shirt of your own, that fits you.”</p><p>“It doesn’t fit me?” it asked.</p><p>“No,” she said, and demonstratively tugged at the end of one sleeve, which was too long for its arm, and was in line with its fingers. It bit its lip. It did not want to be more trouble, did not want to take away from a poor woman’s time, nor her money.</p><p>“I can roll it up,” it suggested, and made an attempt, but with its awkward, fumbling fingers, it succeeded only in trying to fold the cuff twice over before she put her hand on its wrist, steadying it.</p><p>“Breeches,” she repeated, and took out a pair of those, as well, which, once he had them on, left some space about its thin waist, and had to be rolled up at the ankle simply so it can walk. “I’ll make you your own of these, too,” she said.</p><p>“Your charity humbles me,” it said, and she looked at it with a frown on her face.</p><p>“Now,” said Marguerite softly, “where ever did you learn to speak like that?”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>When Jean woke up on the sofa, another blanket had been gently tucked around his shoulders, and he could hear Colm and Asmodeus in the yard, could hear Colm telling Asmodeus what to pick up and what to do, and Asmodeus assenting as he obeyed.</p><p>Asmodeus did not tend to physical labour as Colm did, but he always did as Colm did when Colm asked him, and yet for all that, Jean-Pierre could feel the uncertainty radiate from Colm as he moved back and forth in the yard.</p><p>He was often like this, after they moved – pensive and uncertain, walking on eggshells around Asmodeus for no reason at all, and Jean-Pierre had never entirely been able to understand it.</p><p>His shoulders hurt.</p><p>He knew precisely why – it had been nearly two months since last he’d had the chance to really sit down and groom his wings, and once he’d left it for a few weeks, he’d begun procrastinating the task, knowing it would be painful.</p><p>It hadn’t mattered much crammed into that horrible little boat cabin – <em>everything</em> had hurt, not just his wings, but now, allowed to sleep and relax and lie on a comfortable bed (comfortable to somebody, at least, because in Jean-Pierre’s own eyes, the sofa was far more comfortable than Asmodeus’ hard-mattressed silken affair), he could feel the tangled agony gathered in his shoulders.</p><p>Colm was going to be angry with him for not mentioning it sooner, and Asmodeus would be angry, too, but Jean-Pierre couldn’t stomach the idea of grappling with them himself, not right now.</p><p>“Ah, you’re awake,” said Asmodeus as he stepped inside. “Ready?”</p><p>“Not really,” Jean-Pierre mumbled miserably, but began to unlace his blouse, and he heard the door close as Colm came inside.</p><p>“His wings?”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“Jean, when did you last…?”</p><p>“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jean-Pierre muttered, and when he let his wings forth, it did not feel, as it should have, like the relief of unfolding cramped limbs. It felt like tearing something, like he himself was a tangled mess of wires dragged out from the box of Christmas decorations, and he groaned in pain at the ache of muscle, the stiff pain of dirt and awkward bone, the desperate <em>tension</em>.</p><p>“In ainm <em>Dé</em>, Jean,” he heard Colm whisper under his breath, and he buried his face in his hands.</p><p>“Are they really that bad?”</p><p>“You said you didn’t want to talk about it,” Asmodeus rumbled, but Jean could hear the disapproval in his voice, and he folded in on himself, hiding his face even as his brothers stepped slowly forward.</p><p>Bracing himself for some hours of agony to come, he stayed very still until they started their work.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>The sky was beginning to change in colour when Colm stood back and surveyed his work, his hands set on his hips. His whole body ached from the labour, his shoulders humming with the exertion, streaks staining his body and trousers from grass and earth alike.</p><p>The strimmer he had returned to old Mr Delaney, who lived three doors down and had beautifully kept hydrangeas growing along his hedge border, and now he had some great piles of grass, hedge trimmings, and branches piled up beside the old shed.</p><p>There were rhododendrons tangled in with the rest of the hedge, and he didn’t care for those, would probably untangle them and prune out their roots, but there were other plants he was delighted to have – red currants and black currants grew in one tangled lump at the end of the back yard, and the gooseberry bush was a little overgrown, but healthy.</p><p>He hadn’t yet started tilling over the soil, because he’d want to segment it all out first – he’d probably use the old wood from the shed for that, ramshackle thing as it was, and as the wood was near enough to rotting anyway, it would suit for piecing apart the garden’s vegetable rows before sinking down beneath the soil.</p><p>Moving into the house, he kicked off his boots, and hesitated as he came into the main room, looking down at Jean-Pierre where he was sprawled on the sofa, long legs almost falling off the end of it, his face slack in sleep on the pillow he’d shoved into Asmodeus’ lap. Asmodeus was focused on his book, his lips twisted in an absent-minded frown of concentration.</p><p>“The neighbours are going to ask where those scars are from,” he said mildly, turning a page, and Colm looked down at himself as he passed behind the other man, at the scattered cuts and ragged scars laid over his chest, and the wet-looking, shiny patch of skin along his righthand side, where he hadn’t quite gotten out of the way fast enough during a bombing in ’23.</p><p>“They know better than that,” Colm said, pouring fresh milk into a glass.</p><p>“There’s bags for your grass clippings in the press under the stairs,” Asmodeus said. “I thought you’d need them.”</p><p>“In the press, are they?” Colm repeated, mocking Asmodeus’ pronunciation, and Asmodeus chuckled, marking his page and setting his book aside before he put one arm over the back of the sofa, turning to look at him. “I wake him up?” He was aware of the regret in his voice, knew that Asmodeus probably heard it too, but to his credit, he didn’t point it out.</p><p>“I know we’ll need to get to the hardware store before you can get to work on the house,” Asmodeus said softly, “but he can’t put his sound-dampening enchantment until that’s done.”</p><p>“That glazing’ll need redoing, too,” Colm said. “Can’t be dealing with the one pane of glass. I’ll do the measurements for that and order the panes tonight. There’s no other big things that need doing but for the porch, though, I don’t think.” He took a long swig of his milk, putting his fingers over the fridge – they’d not had a fridge in College Station, because Asmodeus had enchanted the cold cabinet himself, but the kitchen was a lot smaller here, with less wall space for cabinets.</p><p>“You been into the cellar?”</p><p>“There’s a cellar?”</p><p>“Hatch is in the pantry. Thought you and Jean might like your armoury onsite rather than having to drive out to the thing, if you could manage it.”</p><p>Colm smiled slightly, putting his glass down. “You thought of everything, huh?”</p><p>“This time.”</p><p>“How long are you going to be with us?”</p><p>Asmodeus considered the question for a few moments, and it wasn’t the calculating silence of a man trying to avoid the question, or trying to think of how best to answer it, because Asmodeus wasn’t that sort of man – Colm could see him look into that strange, long-reaching datebook he had tucked away in his head, could see him working it out.</p><p>“At least three months,” he said. “Assuming I’m not urgently called elsewhere, but I don’t see why I would be. You don’t like the house?”</p><p>“No, I like it. I like it a lot – better than the one we had in College Station, actually.”</p><p>“You didn’t want to leave Texas?”</p><p>“I was fine leaving Texas – it’s nice to come back home, even if it is to Dublin. Look, can we— I’d rather have this talk outside.”</p><p>“Alright,” Asmodeus said softly, and Colm watched the tender care he took to ease Jean’s head from his lap, settling it back down on the sofa. Jean-Pierre was under his own blanket, one of the patchwork things he’d made back in the ‘80s, and Asmodeus had took another blanket out from the ottoman and thrown it over him. Asmodeus was always careful with Jean, treated him like he was some pretty, fragile thing made of china – it would piss Colm off, except that Asmodeus treated Colm like that, too, and he supposed to him, fragile was exactly what they were.</p><p>Asmodeus hung up his cardigan on the coat stand as Colm got the recycling bags, but he didn’t bother to change out of his salmon-pink shirt, instead just rolling up the sleeves, and he kept on his skinny trousers, too.</p><p>“Prick,” Colm murmured as he stepped past him to drag on his boots, and he heard Asmodeus laugh as he moved out into the yard.</p><p>For a long while, with the sun beginning to set over their heads, they worked in companionable silence – no matter that Asmodeus avoided physical labour unless he was asked, he was nearly twice Colm’s size and almost as built with muscle, and he was more than able for putting his shoulder to the plough when it came down to it.</p><p>They filled a good eight bags with clippings from the meadows and the hedgerow – the biggest of the branches Colm set in a pile to build the compost heap out of, and one bag of the meadow he’d keep back, too, the better to build that up and insulate it.</p><p>“So?” prompted Asmodeus as he tossed the last of the bags aside.</p><p>Even after all that, no clippings or mown pieces clung to his clothes or his skin, although one curl of black hair had come out of his place – and honestly, that made him look even more picture-perfect.</p><p>It was uncomfortable, sometimes, how good Asmodeus looked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre put it down to him being handsome, but Colm had never thought it was about that, not really: there was something about Asmodeus that just left him looking picture-perfect no matter the situation, even when he <em>was</em> dirty or bloody, and there was an uncanniness in perfection at the best of times, an uncanniness Colm ordinarily shied away from.</p><p>“Just feels like Jean and I don’t do much these days,” Colm said quietly. “I know we help out when friends call us in, take our own targets as they come up – and back in Texas, Jean had his radio station, I had the church group, the community garden, but… I don’t know. Feels like we’re just not living up to what we could be. What we used to be, centuries back.”</p><p>Asmodeus nodded his head, his lips loosely pursed, his expression focused – he was taking this seriously, Colm could see, and Colm wondered how much he really understood, how much he <em>could</em> understand.</p><p>“What can I do?” he asked. “To help?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Colm said quietly. “I just— Seems like we only help the family, these days. I feel like I’m not doing enough for… everyone.”</p><p>“Please don’t feel I’m holding you here,” Asmodeus said softly, “nor Jean-Pierre. I do my duty to the family, but I never meant to force that you should share in it – if you wished to go somewhere else entirely. I can call on the Embassy, if you’d like a position there, or you could join the army, if you wanted, I wouldn’t stop you.”</p><p>Colm laughed, softly, and when Asmodeus stared at him, uncomprehending, Colm gave a small shake of his hand. “No, I’m not… You’re not holding us here. It’s not that. It’s not <em>you</em> – it’s me. My choices. I like what we do, what we did in College Station, what we’ll do here – I like the human connection, the charity, the… <em>peace</em> that goes by for weeks and months at a time. I suppose I just don’t know if that’s wrong of me.”</p><p>Asmodeus gave him a slow, wry smile. “I’m not exactly an expert,” he pointed out, “when it comes to right and wrong.”</p><p>Colm’s laugh was low and hard, harder than he wanted, and he put his hands on his hips, pressing his fingers into the unyielding flesh there.</p><p>“Just feels like we’re your tagalongs, sometimes, or as though we’re some kind of inconvenience you have to remember to move around every twenty years or so. I mean, take this house – the yard for me, Ireland for me, all that red and gold for Jean inside, the cellar for us to work in, and don’t think I didn’t see all them leaflets on the kitchen side, brochures for university for Jean, leaflets about the nearest allotments and volunteering services for me. I mean, did you pick <em>anything</em> in this house for you?”</p><p>Asmodeus was silent, and Colm hated how he couldn’t glean a damn thing from him, hated how he couldn’t even <em>reach</em> for what he was feeling under the surface, what he was feeling at all – he might as well try to empathise with a brick wall.</p><p>“You’d be happier in the country,” Colm said. “Some place in the wilderness – or, Hell, in Nottingham, maybe, that’s where that weird furniture-maker you like lives, isn’t it? You don’t have to <em>do</em> everything for us. We can do it ourselves, you don’t have to—”</p><p>“I want to,” Asmodeus said, interrupting Colm in one clean, smooth movement. “You ask what I picked in the house for me? You two. A house with you two in it is the house I’d pick every time.”</p><p>“You never picked us,” Colm said. “You found Jean when he was sad and lonely, and he decided to cling to you ever since, and me, I did the same thing, because I was just <em>tired</em> of—” Colm trailed off, not able to stand the blank expression on Asmodeus’ face any longer, and he turned away, staring at the orange skies instead. “We aren’t <em>special</em>. We’re not any different to any other angel you’ve picked up after the Fall.”</p><p>“Is that what you think?” asked Asmodeus, his voice slightly louder than before, slightly harder, but with no easily discernible emotion in it: Colm set his jaw.</p><p>“You can’t tell me we’re your favourites,” Colm said. “It would go against your duty, wouldn’t it? To have favourites?”</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said. “You two <em>are</em> my favourites – the two I <em>choose</em> to live with, to throw my lot in with. My duty is what I decide it is – and my duty is to you two, first and foremost. Close family comes before the rest. I love you, Colm, and Jean-Pierre too. You understand that, don’t you?”</p><p>Colm remembered it in flashes, their first meeting, the cold spot that was Asmodeus hoving out of the darkness – darkness that Colm could barely see through, his head thrumming with the explosion, his vision swimming with it, and then Asmodeus <em>touching</em> him, pulling him out of that bloody, muddied mess that was left of the battlefield around them, Asmodeus warm and unspeakably cold all at once, and Colm screaming into the back of his shoulder, certain that this was an angel of death, come finally to take him away.</p><p>It hadn’t been exactly like that, in the end.</p><p>He hadn’t gone with Asmodeus until later, decades later, and then…</p><p>“You don’t feel things the way that we do,” Colm said quietly. “You said that to me, once. Emotion, it’s distant, for you.”</p><p>Asmodeus’ hand clasped tightly at Colm’s shoulder, dragging him around, and he held tightly to both of Colm’s shoulders, looking down at him seriously, the muscle in his jaw twitching slightly with how tightly it was clenched. Asmodeus’ eyes, the dark, dull green of uncut emeralds, stared into Colm’s with more intensity than Colm had ever seen from them.</p><p>“Then think how very much I must love the two of you,” he rumbled, voice coming from so deep in his chest that the resonance of it actually hurt Colm’s ears slightly, too close to a Voice for his Fallen understanding, “for me to tell you for certain that I do.”</p><p>Colm heard the shocked exhalation he let out, heard the relief in it before he felt it, and he fell forward, dropping his head against Asmodeus’ chest and letting the other man hug him tightly – so tightly, this time, Colm thought he might bruise, and was grateful for it.</p><p>Colm pulled away, and Asmodeus reached to cup his cheek, sliding one thumb over the stubble there. “I love you,” he repeated, and Colm nodded.</p><p>“We love you too,” he said softly, and Asmodeus gave a nod of his head. “I meant to ask, um— the nearest church?”</p><p>“Saint Fiachra’s Parish,” Asmodeus said softly. “Just around the corner – Latin mass is Sundays at 10:30. Two priests.”</p><p>Colm crossed his arms over his chest, and he gave Asmodeus a flat look. “You have a preference for which of them does the house blessing?”</p><p>“Father James Byrne, please,” Asmodeus said pleasantly.</p><p>“I don’t suppose you’ll be joining us for Mass?”</p><p>“I don’t suppose I will.”</p><p>“What’s wrong with him? Byrne?”</p><p>“Now, Colm,” Asmodeus said, his voice honeyed and playful. “You have your hobbies, I have mine. Come, let’s finish up the yard before we head in.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Colm lingered back for a second as Jean-Pierre’s wings unfolded, unable to keep the stricken look from his face as he saw them come apart. It was different, when Jean got into his own head and forgot to brush his hair or scrub the blood off his skin – that sort of thing was <em>visible</em>, could be pushed at, tugged at.</p><p>His wings?</p><p>They were hidden away.</p><p>They were great things, massive compared to Jean-Pierre, and perhaps one might think they shouldn’t really suit his body, because where Jean-Pierre was delicate and willowy, with a dancer’s muscle, the sort one forgot about as soon as one looked away, his wings were thickly corded with muscle and <em>massive</em>, each one of them seeming as big as Jean-Pierre was himself – his wingspan, when they were fully outstretched, was something like fifteen feet, and it <em>should</em> have been cartoonish.</p><p>It wasn’t, though.</p><p>The wings seemed so natural where they sprouted from the second set of shoulder blades, pressed beneath the first set, and ordinarily, their plumage was a beautiful burnished gold, a dark yellow that actually shone and glittered in the sunlight, when they were groomed correctly.</p><p>Now?</p><p>Jean held his wings tight into his body at an uncomfortable-looking angle, and Colm could see where the muscle was knotted and tangled under the thinner flesh at their base; half of the feathers were rumpled or bent out of place, some of them with their quills snapped; over their surface, even furled as they were, he could see patches of thick, caked oil stuck in grey lumps in amongst the plumage, and patches, too, that were blood-raw or scabbed over, where broken quills had dragged at the flesh under his feathers.</p><p>“Oh, Jean,” Colm said softly, and he thought about reaching out and taking Jean’s pain on himself again, as he had earlier, but Jean-Pierre hated when he did that at the best of times, and he knew that to do it twice in one day would lead, at least, to Jean spitting in his face.</p><p>Jean started to carefully unfurl his wings, doing it little by little, and while he could stretch the one on the right out almost entirely, the left was stiff, and Colm could see his twisted expression of pain as he tried to roll his shoulder, shifting the muscle.</p><p>“It hurts when <em>you</em> do it,” Jean said sharply as Asmodeus stepped forward.</p><p>“Only because you’ve neglected them,” Asmodeus said, and carefully touched the edge of the stiff joint where Jean was struggling to open himself up, pressing on the tense muscle. Jean let out a sobbed noise, but he managed to move the muscle out, and now, his wings were almost entirely spread out, the tips of his feathers touching the wall on one side and brushing the side of the fridge on the other.</p><p>They looked worse, like this, ragged and thick with tangled feathers, red streaked all over their surface, as much as the gold.</p><p>Colm didn’t have wings. Most angels didn’t, when they Fell – Asmodeus had explained, once, that it had to do with what they’d been before they’d Fallen, though Colm had never met an angel who remembered what they’d been before the Great Fall.</p><p>Asmodeus did, he thought, but Colm had never yet dared to ask.</p><p>Wings were a common manifestation of angelic power, usually paired – as Jean’s was – with exaggerated senses of empathy or mild telepathy, or with healing powers; some angels commanded certain elements, or could heal wounds, or perform impossible feats of strength.</p><p>Colm, he could manipulate the way other people felt, impart emotions onto others or take them away – and, more importantly, he could make flowers grow, give plants life and let them grow under his fingers.</p><p>He wondered sometimes, what it might be like, to have wings like Jean-Pierre’s, but it wasn’t as though it was just wings slapped onto a human body – Jean’s bones were light and hollow, like a bird’s, so that he weighed almost nothing, and if you fed him dairy or alcohol or anything else, he’d be sick for days. Wings, he might like, but the rest, Colm didn’t think he could stand.</p><p>And right now, this? This, he couldn’t stand either.</p><p>“It’s okay, Jean,” Colm said softly, and reached for the first awry feather, tugging it out from the plumage with a small pinch: Jean hissed, and curled more tightly into his foetal position, face fallen forward against the back of the sofa, his back to the fire. “You want me to take some of the pain off you?”</p><p>“No,” Jean said, through gritted teeth. “Just— just get it over with. Please.”</p><p>“We’ve got you,” Asmodeus said quietly, and he and Colm got to work.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>There were a few different kinds of pain that went with a grooming session like this.</p><p>Ordinarily, there was no pain at all – oh, it was uncomfortable to drag at the occasional crusted clumps of oil, yes, and there was a quick sting to pulling out a bent feather, but it wasn’t <em>pain</em>. It was satisfying, even, satisfying, pleasurable, in an exerting way: Jean remembered well how much it had pleased him to be groomed, when it was Jules doing it, feeling his warmth at his back, feeling the gentleness of Jules’ hands buried in his down, or Jules’ kiss at the back of his neck.</p><p>There was no pleasure here, not now.</p><p>His wings ached as great walls of sore, tense muscle, and the clumps of oil <em>dragged</em> and tore at the skin as they were scratched and scraped free of his skin, pulling out some of the feathers as they went, and that aside, too many of his feathers had grown in wrong, bent or twisted or tangled, so that they had to be pulled free to let the rest grow in again, properly.</p><p>He was going to have patchy wings for weeks, and he’d have to keep rubbing a balm into the cut patches if he didn’t want to risk an infection where the oil wasn’t spreading with enough down to let it flow.</p><p>Colm’s hands were gentle as they worked on one side, always massaging where a quill pressed under the skin before he pulled a broken feather free, always pressing very carefully through a clump of dried oil before working it away.</p><p>Asmodeus, in contrast, was brutally efficient. He didn’t feel most of the feathers being tugged free initially, because he did them suddenly and quickly, like someone tearing off a plaster, but after, the spot ached. It was almost better, though, that he moved so fast, because the process wasn’t so drawn-out.</p><p>He didn’t know when he started crying.</p><p>He only realised there were tears on his cheeks when Asmodeus pressed his handkerchief into Jean-Pierre’s hand, and he wiped at them hard enough that he felt like his cheeks would bruise.</p><p>“Are you nearly finished?” he asked, in a thick mumble.</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said, and dragged his thumb through a crusted piece of oil, making Jean cry out in pain. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Jean believed that he was sorry. Asmodeus was many things, but he wasn’t a sadist, and he hated to see any angel in pain, but Jean-Pierre and Colm especially. Jean didn’t reply, and buried his face harder in the sofa’s cushions.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Later, they all gathered in Jean’s room, where Colm had set up the television on Jean’s chest of drawers, the three of them crammed into Jean’s bed. He was sat half in both his and Asmodeus’ laps, his wings curled around the both of them, leaning back into the soft, thick down on the underside of his wings.</p><p>Colm always forgot how much he liked the scent of Jean-Pierre’s feathers, when he went for a while without smelling it: it came from the oil that was secreted throughout his wings, which helped keep his plumage clean and insulated, and it was a woody, spiced scent a little too acidic to be called citrusy – sometimes, in the old days, people would ask Jean-Pierre why he smelled so much like frankincense, although these days, people didn’t normally recognise it.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was flicking through movie after movie on the TV, unable to decide on anything, but Colm wasn’t particularly fussed either way tonight, and Asmodeus wouldn’t watch whatever was on unless it was at least seventy years old – already, Colm could see his hands twitching to go back to his book.</p><p>“Did you pick Dublin for Colm?” Jean-Pierre asked, apropos of nothing, and Colm saw Asmodeus stir slightly – with Jean-Pierre’s wings as they were, both of them curled back into he curve of one, he couldn’t see Asmodeus’ face, and he realised that the twitch of Asmodeus’ fingers hadn’t been him wanting to reach for his book at all – he’d been falling asleep.</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said after a moment’s pause, collecting himself.</p><p>“You picked it for a Fall?”</p><p>“Soon.”</p><p>“Are they going to come stay with us? Whoever Falls?”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Asmodeus murmured. “It’s never possible to say what they’ll be like, until they arrive – the Embassy already knows this one is coming, and we’re not the only angels in Dublin.”</p><p>“We’re not?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“No,” Colm said. “Padraic Mac Giolla Chriost lives here, remember.”</p><p>“He’s a member of St Fiachra’s congregation, too,” Asmodeus said softly.</p><p>Jean’s lips parted, and although he didn’t look away from the options he was flicking through, Colm could see his brow furrow in thought. “The one with the daughter? Bedelia?”</p><p>“That’s the one,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“Is she really his daughter?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“Biologically, I mean,” Jean-Pierre pressed, and even without seeing his face, Colm could see that Asmodeus wasn’t going to answer that particular question – there were some questions he never did, and never would.</p><p>“What does it feel like?” Colm asked. “You always know when one of is going to Fall – how do you know? Is it like remembering dates on a calendar, or do you <em>feel</em> it, like you can feel a change in the wind?”</p><p>“It’s as though I’m remembering something I don’t quite recall,” Asmodeus said. “It feels like I’ve heard the sensation of déja vu described. A ghost of memory, indirect and incomplete.”</p><p>“Don’t a lot of the Embassy hate him?” Jean-Pierre asked. “Mac Giolla Chriost?”</p><p>“Pick a film, Jean,” Colm said when Asmodeus said nothing.</p><p> It was rare that Asmodeus fell asleep before them. He hadn’t slept much on the cruise, Colm was aware, because he’d spend a lot of his days with Colm, but the nights, he’d spend comforting Jean – Colm having been banned from Jean’s cabin, lest he feel the temptation to take away some of the seasickness, which Jean had furiously labelled hypocrisy.</p><p>Asmodeus fell asleep before more than five minutes had passed into the film, and Jean paused the movie to push Asmodeus down in the bed, so that his head was laid on the pillow instead of uncomfortably leaned into his own shoulder. Colm threw a blanket over him, and when Jean wriggled back on the bed, no longer in Colm’s lap but instead behind him, Colm allowed it, laying his cheek on Jean’s chest.</p><p>“He’s exhausted,” Jean said softly against the top of Colm’s head. “He never takes care of himself when we’re moving.”</p><p>Colm hadn’t considered that, and tried, for once, to go a few minutes without feeling a fresh wave of guilt – he did not succeed, and closed his eyes, listening to the bird-fast beat of Jean-Pierre’s heart in his rib cage.</p><p>“He’s picked out a priest,” Colm said quietly. “One of the two at St Fiachra’s.”</p><p>“I wish he wouldn’t do that.” Jean rested his chin on top of Colm’s hair, wrapping his arms loosely around his body. “There’s already a shortage. You know in Ireland, the average age for a priest is seventy?”</p><p>Colm did know that – he’d forwarded the article to Jean-Pierre when he’d read it, but Jean never remembered where he learned things from. “Somehow, I feel like the one Asmodeus picked is a bit younger.”</p><p>“Do you think he’ll ever fall in love?”</p><p>Colm looked down at Asmodeus’ sleeping face, his expression relaxed, but somehow uncomfortably perfect, statuesque, even like this. “With a priest? No.”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre said. “With someone else.”</p><p><em>No</em>, Colm didn’t say. “Maybe. Feeling lonely, are you?”</p><p>“It’s been a long time,” Jean-Pierre mumbled against Colm’s hair, and Colm nodded his head. It had been a long time, really – the last time Jean had taken up with a man properly, they’d been living in Chicago, and that had nearly forty years ago.</p><p>“You never have that much trouble, once you decide to start looking,” Colm said.</p><p>“Nasty,” Jean-Pierre said, pulling Colm’s hair, and Colm chuckled.</p><p>“You’ll find someone,” he said quietly, and as the film flickered on, he let his eyes close shut, feeling the warmth of Jean under his cheek, feeling the cold sink of Asmodeus on the other side of the bed. “I love you, Jean.”</p><p>“Tá grá agam duit,” Jean murmured.</p><p>“You sound so fucking stupid when you talk as gaeilge.”</p><p>“At least I only sound French,” Jean murmured smugly. “It could be much worse. I could sound like I was from Kerry.”</p><p>Colm laughed, and shoved him out of bed.  </p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Saturday morning saw Aimé painting on St Stephen’s Green, like it normally did: an alcoholic he was, and hungover he was, too, but he was a creature of habit.</p><p>He was mixing his palette when the smell caught his attention, like a sweetened frankincense, wafting on the air, and he looked up to where it had come from, and he was arrested.</p><p>The man was beautiful beyond measure, tall and possessed of a ballerino’s grace, his golden hair allowed to run free in thick tresses around his shoulders. His skin was as pale as porcelain, his eyes brightly blue, and he laughed freely, his eyes crinkling as he did so, and drawing attention to the scar under his left eye, bright pink and slightly twisted where the rest of his skin was perfect and unmarred.</p><p>He was dressed in a heavy, red jumper three or four sizes at least too big for him, so much that he swam in it, but his legs were clad in tight jeans that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, showing the muscle in his calves and his thighs, and Aimé wondered if it was worth cursing whatever cruel God that might exist, because the long jumper meant that a glimpse of this perfect creature’s arse was beyond hoping for.</p><p>“But I <em>love</em> them, Colm! You’re my brother – aren’t you meant to care for me?”</p><p>Christ, that <em>voice</em>, a beautiful, smooth tenor, and better than that, the <em>accent</em> – a Frenchman, really? His pretty lips looked even prettier, putting a purr to every softly rolled <em>r</em>.</p><p>He was gesturing with his pretty hands as he spoke, showing off paint on his nails – oh, and how <em>cute</em>, he’d painted them red, white, and blue. The beautiful angel was soft in the head – a patriot. Who needed brains, when you were that pretty?</p><p>“You grew them in Vietnam,” the angel went on.</p><p>“Do you need me to explain the difference between the climate in Vietnam and Ireland?” was the dry-toned retort. “It’s a <em>cactus</em>.”</p><p>“But, Colm,” was the beseeching reply, the angel tugging on his brother’s sleeve. “<em>Dragon fruit!”</em></p><p>Watching after them as they kept moving along the path, Aimé softly sighed, and then looked back to his canvas, primed and ready, and threateningly, damningly blank.</p><p>He thought of the frankincense-scented stranger laughing on the bench beside him, eating his dragon fruit – whatever the fuck <em>that</em> was – and forced himself to smile, then picked his cigarette out of his travel ash tray, holding it between his lips as he reached into his satchel for his water bottle.</p><p>The taste of vodka was a punishing balm on his tongue.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Father O’Flaherty was an ancient.</p><p>At the age of eighty-four with all the decades behind him dedicated to the priesthood, he was responsible for the Tridentine Mass at Saint Fiachra’s, as well as at several other churches in North Dublin. He was possessed of very narrow, thin, square shoulders that scarcely moved as he shuffled along, hunched forward – although in his youth, Jean-Pierre suspected he had been six feet in height, he was now far shorter with age and arthritis, and he moved with neither speed nor agility. Balding, with only a scant few wisps of pale white hair clinging to his liver-spotted head, he was pale as milk, and as he made his way laboriously up the steps toward the altar, all but swimming in his vestments, Jean-Pierre felt himself lean forward, craning, expecting to hear a soft, reedy voice to match the old man’s body.</p><p>When O’Flaherty began his prayer, the sound of his voice was hoarse and dry, but his intonation was so loud that his voice echoed from the walls and high, high ceiling, and Jean-Pierre felt himself blink in shock at the sudden volume, leaning back in parallel to his brother beside him.</p><p>Closing his eyes and looping his rosary beads loosely around his fingers, Jean-Pierre exhaled, and let the familiar liturgy, in large part unchanged since first he had set himself into a pew, wash over him.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>“I’ve not lain eyes on either of you two before, hm,” said Father O’Flaherty as Colm moved to shake his hand, and Jean-Pierre followed after him, giving the old man a smile. “Are you visiting, or…?”</p><p>“My name is Colm O’Beaglaoich, and this is my brother, Jean. We recently moved onto Grangemore Lane there. We’ve been living in America the past while.”</p><p>“Oh,” O’Flaherty said, glancing between the two of them and smiling. “I believe I had a letter from your brother, Ashley, saying the two of you would be joining our congregation, hm – O’Beaglaoich, and you, your last name is Delacroix, isn’t it?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre inclined his head, and he was aware of the way O’Flaherty looked him up and down, no doubt thinking of the difference between Colm’s suit – a charcoal number with a pale blue shirt, though without a tie – and Jean-Pierre’s own clothes: wine-coloured trousers, a cream-coloured blouse, his waistcoat worn open. Jean-Pierre had spent some time this morning embroidering new dampening enchantments into his clothes, that he shouldn’t be plagued overmuch by the volume of other people’s emotion as he settled himself into a new city, a new population.</p><p>“Beautiful handwriting, your brother – he isn’t one for the Tridentine Mass?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre glanced at Colm, meeting his gaze for a moment, aware of the amusement no doubt showing from them both in waves, and then said, in a smooth and easy voice, well-practised by now, “Our brother is lapsed, Father.”</p><p>“Oh, sure, hear the accent on you, so,” O’Flaherty said, raising brows that were very nearly bald, and held only the ghost of silver hair. “You two are brothers?”</p><p>“We have the same father,” said Colm. “All three of us do.”</p><p>“Ah,” said O’Flaherty, in tones of slow understanding, and then he nodded his ancient head, though his stiff neck barely moved. “You’ll be wanting a house blessing, I suppose?</p><p>“We understand if your schedule is busy, Father,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“No, no, s’not me who’ll be doing it, so – you’ll be wanting Father Byrne, so you will. I’ll pass your number onto him, and he’ll call you to sort out a time and place, hm.” Like many old men, the priest tended to some soft hums and grunts in the course of conversation.</p><p>“I wanted to ask, Father,” said Colm, casually brushing the old man’s elbow of a piece of lint: a moment later, he seemed to relax slightly, releasing a soft, wheezing sigh, and Jean-Pierre suppressed his smile, “the rose garden in the church’s front there – is that your doing?”</p><p>“Oh, no, no, that’s Father Byrne as well, hm. A green thumb he has, you can be sure of that. What congregation are you coming from?”</p><p>“We were living in College Station, a city in Texas,” Colm said.</p><p>Father O’Flaherty’s eyes, which were a cloudy blue colour, but focused and active, had still been fixed on Jean-Pierre, at the glint of the gold crucifix around his neck, but how he looked to Colm.</p><p>“Many Irish there?” asked O’Flaherty: there was a note of disapproval in his voice that suggested he had a suspicion of the answer, and disapproved of it.</p><p>“Enough for a good community,” Colm said mildly, not rising to the bait. “But Jean and I have good Spanish, and we didn’t refine our service attendance to Irish Catholic services only, when we were travelling.”</p><p>“We are all united by our faith in Christ, are we not, Father?” Jean-Pierre asked in a sweet voice, leaning his head to the side and feeling the way his hair fell against his shoulder as he did, worn loose, as he always wore it for Mass. The old man softened, however marginally.</p><p>“That’s true enough,” O’Flaherty grumbled, in the tone of a man outnumbered.</p><p>“It was good to meet you, Father,” Colm said, stepping back slightly to allow an old lady to come forward. “You’re always welcome to drop into us if you’re out Donaghmede way.”</p><p>As they stepped out from the church, Jean-Pierre tilted his head back, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face – it had been clouded over, when they’d stepped inside, but for now it was peeking out from behind the swathes of grey.</p><p>The churchyard had a small cemetery to one side, every gravestone in it some two-hundred years old at least, and a grotto dedicated to St Mary to the other side, with several benches for private contemplation. It was between the church entrance and the path toward the grotto that the rose garden lay, and they saw its artificer step through the church gates.</p><p>“Father Byrne, I presume,” Colm said brightly and proffered his hand, and the other man took it without a word, shaking Colm’s hand before looking to Jean-Pierre.</p><p>James Byrne was a man in his forties, and handsome, with a strong jaw touched over with the beginnings of a beard, and high cheekbones, steel-grey hair. He had a haunted look about him, and Jean-Pierre saw in him a vulnerability that he had seen in some half a dozen priests since he had known Asmodeus, and that Asmodeus had no doubt searched for and found in thousands.</p><p>There was nothing his brother liked better than a man of the cloth besieged by doubt.</p><p>“My name is Jean-Pierre,” he said softly as he took the other man’s hand, “and this is my brother, Colm. We’re recently arrived in Dublin from America – Father O’Flaherty says you might perform the blessing on our home.”</p><p>“Of course,” Father Byrne said quietly, his voice very soft and solemn, his eyes dark pools of cold, flint grey, in line with the colour of the stubble on his jaw. “I could fit you in next week, I think – but no sooner. You two sit the Tridentine Mass?”</p><p>“All our lives,” Colm and Jean-Pierre said together, and shared a soft chuckle that Father Byrne visibly distrusted.</p><p>“Father O’Flaherty has our contact details,” Colm said. “Let us know when would be convenient for you, and we’ll prioritise your schedule, Father.”</p><p>“You two aren’t working in the city?”</p><p>“Our working schedule is flexible,” Colm said. “And Jean won’t starting university until September.”</p><p>“Right,” Father Byrne said quietly, and nodded his head. “I shall see you both.”</p><p>Moving between the two of them, he ascended the steps and under the arch of St Fiachra’s door, and Jean-Pierre slipped his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat, his boots making a quiet noise upon the path as they stepped out from the church’s gates, the two of them making their way toward the bus stop.</p><p>“Are you going to get a car?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“I expect so,” Colm said. “Asmodeus asked me about it when my new license came in from the Embassy in the post this morning. Why, you think you might actually learn to drive?”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre said. “I was thinking about all the things you want to get for the garden.”</p><p>“Ah, we’ll see. I’ve a delivery coming the afternoon, and I should have the porch rebuilt by tonight, the greenhouse done by Friday,” Colm said. “You know what you’re doing about school?”</p><p>“I have interviews in May,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “But I resat exams earlier in the year to match our new IDs here, and I’m not expecting any problems – I’ve never had any before. “</p><p>“This is your sixth go at medical school?”</p><p>“Seventh.”</p><p>“Don’t you get tired of it?”</p><p>“It’s so different every time,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I really don’t.”</p><p>He’d first attended school in Paris – that had been in 1735, and there had been next to no practical learning whatsoever, until he’d actually studied under another physician. The difference between his study then and his study at the turn of the century was almost impossibly to wholly describe, so complete was the separation between one world and the other – and every return to medical school seemed yet again more extreme in its divorce from the schools he’d attended before.</p><p>It wasn’t as though he avoided complementary reading in the meantime, wasn’t as though he ceased his study of the profession simply because his last university focus was behind him, but it was important, to be entirely up-to-date.</p><p>And he liked to be around students. He liked the flare of hope that so many of them carried, the want for change, the energy and verve, the belief that the world could and <em>should</em> change to fit that which should be Right…</p><p>And where he didn’t find that particular spark of revolutionary fervour, he <em>did</em> so like to create it.</p><p>“If you say so, Docteur,” Colm said softly. “I’m going to drop by the supermarket before I go home. You coming with me?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook his head, reaching into his pocket for his travel card. “I need to go to the witch’s market – I was running low on paint before we left Texas, and I need more – and I lost my enchanter’s hammer, so I need to pick up another one.”</p><p>“You can use mine.”</p><p>“It’s just a hammer – the wood will splinter when I pry off the skirting boards.”</p><p>“Oh, <em>that’s</em> what you’re going to do with it? You never use the blunt end?”</p><p>“Have you <em>ever</em> watched me do the house enchantments?”</p><p>“No,” Colm admitted, and Jean-Pierre laughed, shaking his head.</p><p>“Ignorant.”</p><p>“Me ignorant? You have <em>any</em> idea what I’m going to pick up for the porch?”</p><p>“J’sais rien.” Jean-Pierre shrugged his shoulders. “Bricks?”</p><p>“Christ, Jean.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre grinned, and he looked at Colm, at the good-natured grin on the other man’s face, felt Colm’s knuckles against his shoulder as he lightly punched Jean-Pierre on the arm.</p><p>Once they climbed onto the bus, Jean-Pierre leaned back in his seat, his arms crossed loosely over his belly, and he dropped his head onto Colm’s shoulder, feeling the muscle of it under his cheek. Colm leaned into him, so that their heads were together, and said, “You’re feeling sad.”</p><p>It wasn’t a question.</p><p>Jean-Pierre supposed that was one of the benefits of Colm’s particular predilections – there was no need to bother with questions, when it came to statements like this one.</p><p>“I’m not sad,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I’m lonely.”</p><p>“You miss home? You could visit for a while.”</p><p>“I could. But it was never about the land, or the city, or the… the climate.” He thought of Jules, of lying beside him on warm summer nights as the rain fell down outside, of the first time they’d kissed in the rain, and fallen atop one another in a wheat field, where Jean-Pierre’s wings had come loose and left an angel’s imprint in the crop… “It was the people. My people. You understand that.”</p><p>“I do,” Colm agreed, his voice quiet, and serious in tone. “I do.”</p><p>“You will go home to Kerry?”</p><p>“Maybe,” Colm murmured. “Maybe. We’ll see.”</p><p>“The next is my stop. Do you need anything?”</p><p>“Iron salt for the garden, if you can find any. I know you’ll carve the proper wards into the fence for pests, but I like to have it just in case. You have your phone?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre nodded, and he stood to his feet, loosely wrapping his fingers around one of the poles to keep upright as the bus came to a stop. The melancholy that was settling in followed him like a cloud.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>L’ange, as Aimé came to think of him, for an angel he certainly was, always possessed of a certain effervescence and with his halo of blond hair, became a regular passer-by on St Stephen’s green, often moving past the main path where Aimé tended to paint.</p><p>L’ange, on most days of the week, had a fairly predictable wardrobe. He wore tight pants, either tailored trousers or skinny jeans, and then he would wear cardigans or jumpers that were so large he almost swam in them – Aimé did not believe he had ever seen the angel wear a jumper with a hem higher than his mid-thigh, so that it almost might as well have been a dress. He often wore his hair loose, the finely blond hair bouncing merrily around his shoulders and upper arms, and he tended to wear a variety of shoes.</p><p>Aimé initially believed him to be the sort of rich, air-headed twink that was constantly in and out of the discount clothing stores, but he realised, over the course of April giving way to May, that he was seeing most of the same articles again and again, just worn in such different combinations that they seemed almost entirely new. L’ange had, Aimé suspected, four pairs of shoes: a pair of red trainers, two pairs of calf-high leather boots – one in black, one in brown – and a pair of black ankle boots with a gold buckle, which he wore on Sundays.</p><p>On Sundays, l’ange always dressed up – he wore one of his blouses, which were either white or in a pastel shade, with a waistcoat or a suit jacket overtop, and he never, ever wore jeans.</p><p>He was a practising Catholic, and actually went to Mass every Sunday.</p><p>The idea was unimaginable.</p><p>L’ange favoured bold colours in block formation: he did not wear patterns or prints, except for the complicated cording of some of his expensive-looking oversized jumpers, and occasionally, he wore scarves or hair ribbons with striped patterns, always in red and gold.</p><p>There were two men he regularly walked around with, and at least one of them was his brother, perhaps the other two – the one Aimé had seen before, Colm, was shorter than his brother by nearly a head, but he was buff, often looked ready to pop out of the tight shirts he wore because of how muscled his arms and shoulders were. He had chestnut hair that was a mess of curls on the top of his head, and although Aimé never saw stubble grow on his jaw, he had thick sideburns, and his chest and arms were thickly thatched with curling hair. He had a scatter of freckles on his shoulders and arms, and some moles and marks on his face, and Aimé guessed from the twisted shape of his broad, flat nose that he’d had it broken at least once.</p><p>The other one, Aimé had never heard the name of, but he was taller than the others, possessed of broad shoulders and a model’s energy. He was Middle Eastern, Aimé thought, or maybe African – Aimé’s mother had a particular affection for badly written romance novels about being kidnapped by a handsome sheikh, and this man was handsome like the men on the covers of those, with the same kind of haughty arrogance, although his skin was much darker.</p><p>He didn’t <em>think</em> he was l’ange’s boyfriend, and that was the important thing.</p><p>When the angel walked by with Colm, there was an easy affection between them, and he was constantly leaning on his brother’s shoulder or walking arm-in-arm with him: Aimé had seen them wrestle in the park, once, laughing the whole time, and while he didn’t wrestle with the big guy, he’d twice seen him pick the angel up and throw him over his shoulder like he weighed nothing, and each time the angel had struggled without seeming all that much like he wanted to get free, beaming like sunshine.</p><p>Aimé liked to watch the people who passed by on Stephen’s Green.</p><p>You really did see every sort of people – drunks stumbling along in the streets, people selling this and that, buskers with their instruments on their backs, rich ladies walking arm-in-arm to some overpriced café, tourists of every kind, every kind of fucking guard, homeless auld lads with their little trolleys in tow, kids running one way and the other, dads jogging, walkers of dogs, cats, and in one particular case Aimé held in high affection, a ferret, families off for a picnic…</p><p>And there was l’ange again.</p><p>Wrapped in a cardigan that Aimé suspected belonged to the bigger of his maybe-brothers, because it looked ready to fit three angels at least, he was walking alone, a smile on his face, his chin high and his gaze angled upward, watching the birds in the trees as he walked. No headphones – he never wore headphones, did l’ange.</p><p>Sighing softly around the cigarette held loosely between his lips, Aimé picked up his paintbrush, his can held loosely in his other hand, and returned to work.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre hadn’t learned enchantment until after he had left France for the first time.</p><p>The Revolution had been and gone, as had the turn of the century, and disillusioned by all that had come of it, he’d latched onto Asmodeus when he had passed through Arras, where Jean-Pierre had been practising medicine after his second bout of medical school.</p><p>They’d travelled west at first, spending time in Salzburg and travelling through Hungary before moving back east, and Jean-Pierre still remembered that first voyage to Dublin, how sick it had made him. When they’d left, he’d made the flight himself, meeting Colm and Asmodeus when they landed in Liverpool, and when later, they’d sailed east again, to Greece – they’d landed in 1818, and had time enough to settle before joining the uprising.</p><p>He’d learned much of his skill with enchantment then, and only learned more when they’d travelled on again, further east.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was no master enchanter, but he didn’t need to be: he had prodigious skill in the areas he most needed it, and was no stranger to combining certain modes of the art under a crisis, for the benefit of explosive results. Colm liked actual explosives – he’d not come to develop that particular passion until after he’d been caught in an explosion in 1823, and now he had so innate an understanding of nitro-glycerine and its volatile moods that one would think the stuff ran in his veins – but Jean-Pierre favoured, where it could be managed, more atomic explosions, where one could achieve one’s desired result without fiddling for matches or fuses or powder.</p><p>But then, he wasn’t making anything explode, just now.</p><p>“You’re making quick progress,” Asmodeus said mildly, putting a cup of jasmine tea on the floor beside Jean-Pierre’s cross-legged seat on the floor, and Jean-Pierre smiled, dipping his brush in his paint brush and making rapid, sweeping strokes on the wall base, revealed where he’d pried off the skirting boards. Enchantment wasn’t so complicated an art – one channelled small amounts of magic through carved or drawn symbols, and the effects could last for centuries if one completed the circuit correctly. This particular work was time-consuming, but useful – Jean-Pierre used a variety of structures to ensure fire couldn’t catch the walls, to keep pests out, to strengthen magic performed within the house’s bounds, even some basic disinfecting measures that would run over surfaces.</p><p>There were other measures, of course – in every home Jean-Pierre had inhabited in the past two centuries, he could have an intruder eviscerated with very little blood with little more than a twist of his wrist and a trio of symbols drawn on the nearest flat surface, and that was without even considering his ability to blow the place to kingdom come, but so far, such measures had never proved necessary. It wasn’t as if they’d lacked hostile intruders, God only knew – but other defensive measures were more than easily employed.</p><p>“Is that new?” Asmodeus asked, gesturing with his toe to a series of inscribed symbols on the edge of the kitchen doorjamb.</p><p>“Not that new, I learned that when we spent that summer in New Bedford. I always put it in the kitchen, now – it’s a scent dampener, keeps strong smells from entering or exiting. I put it in the cellar, too.”</p><p>Asmodeus had dropped into a crouch, leaning back on his heels, and put on his glasses to examine the symbols in more detail, his lips twisted in concentration, and then he asked, “It’s specific to fish?”</p><p>“The first line is, the second is for meat, and the third is for alliums. You know Kirsten Waters?”</p><p>“I never visited you two when you were in Massachusetts,” Asmodeus reminded him.</p><p>“Her wife owns a fishing boat but the smell was too strong – she had all sorts of scent dampening charms, but the enchantment keeps it from expanding too far outward. You saw Mac Giolla Chriost?”</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>“And?”</p><p>“And what?”</p><p>“De.”</p><p>At the nickname, Asmodeus gave him an unappreciative look, his lips pressing tightly together, and Jean-Pierre could see the thought in the furrow of his brow as he took a sip of his coffee.</p><p>“Bedelia made tea. I explained that we’d moved to Dublin, that we’d probably see the two of them here and there – I explained that there was a Fall coming in Dublin, that I might ask for his help with it, depending on the circumstances.”</p><p>“We’ve not seen him at Mass.”</p><p>“He doesn’t go to the Latin Mass – he and Bedelia go to the Saturday evening Mass.”</p><p>“That one’s as Gaeilge,” Jean-Pierre said, finishing the final the symbol in his line with a flourish, and pressing his thumb to the paint, watching the silver turn molten under his touch as the whole circuit flared white hot for a moment, and then settle into place. He liked this new paint – it had only been developed in the past few years, but once you ran a magical current through it it embossed itself onto whatever surface you’d painted it, and it was much more long-lasting than paint used to be.</p><p>“Does that mean you approve?”</p><p>“I think Mass should be in Latin,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“Because that’s what God would prefer,” Asmodeus said in dry tones, voice dripping with a venomous sarcasm, and Jean-Pierre didn’t bother to reply, because there was never any point when Asmodeus got catty about things like this.</p><p>Taking up the skirting board and beginning to fit it back into place, he said, “Did you tell him he was welcome to come around to the house?”</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>“What did he say?”</p><p>“He didn’t say anything. He doesn’t say much.”</p><p>“What does he do?”</p><p>“He’s a special needs assistant.”</p><p>“I don’t know what that is.”</p><p>“He helps children with special needs at school – children who need mobility aids, deaf children, blind children, kids with cognitive impairments…” Asmodeus made a gesture of “and so on” with his hands, and Jean-Pierre nodded his head. “He used to be a nurse, but the hours were too long once he had Bedelia, so the Embassy paid for him to go to school.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre considered this for a moment. He had never met Mac Giolla Chriost himself, or his mysterious daughter, but Colm had said on multiple occasions that he was a kind man, and had defended him when his name came up in conversations with other angels, when people talked about him with distrust or distaste.</p><p>“Did you push that through?”</p><p>Asmodeus watched Jean-Pierre, his expression revealing nothing. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“A lot of people at the Embassy don’t like him, don’t approve of Bedelia. Did you push through the approval for them to pay for him to take his course?”</p><p>“The Embassy is about to pay for medical training you’ve already had six times over.”</p><p>“I know – I think the Embassy should give grants for any course an angel wants to do. I’m asking if they resisted <em>this</em> one, because of his daughter.”</p><p>Asmodeus forgot, sometimes, Jean-Pierre suspected, that he and Colm knew better than to fall for bait that he threw into a conversation. Now, he leaned back on his heels again, watching Jean with his green eyes unblinking, too stubborn to look like he’d been caught out, and finally said, in a slow, measured way, “There was… a <em>small</em> protest of a minority of grant council members. It was soon eliminated.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled.</p><p>“What?” Asmodeus asked.</p><p>“You’re a good big brother.”</p><p>“And with that,” Asmodeus muttered, standing to his feet, “I take my leave. Have you eaten yet?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook his head, picking up his tea and drinking from the mug.</p><p>“I’ll get Colm, and we’ll go into town for something. When are his solar panels coming?”</p><p>“Tuesday.”</p><p>“Five more days of complaints about the immersion in the meantime, then,” Asmodeus said under his breath, and Jean-Pierre laughed, pulling himself off the floor and putting the lid on his paint.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>His mother had recently discovered the notion of organic, sustainable farming, which was how Aimé found himself at a painfully clean, cheerful restaurant on Dawson Street, which had reclaimed wood tables, white-painted walls, and offered thick, green, non-alcoholic drinks.</p><p>Having sustained an agonising forty-two minutes – against his better judgement, he had set his watch on the table, and had watched every second pass by – across from his mother and father both, Aimé now stood slowly to his feet, shrugging on his coat.</p><p>His father had said very little – he had made two wry comments about Aimé’s performance at university (or lack thereof), and two more about the amount of paint stains on his clothes. The only other thing he had said had been a rather pointed comment that Jamie Finnerty’s daughter, who had completed not only her BA in law, but a master’s besides, had recently had some of her paintings displayed in a theatre in Galway.</p><p>His mother had said quite a lot, and very little of it had proved of relevance or interest to Aimé – she had talked at length about how she had recently been on a juice cleanse, and referred to her chickpea salad as “sinful” no less than three times.</p><p>In better news, there was a naggin of vodka awaiting him in the lockbox on his bike, and he would never have to step foot in this damned restaurant again, because his mother had argued at length with the server about whether she ought pay for their meal “because my husband’s barely touched his plate”, and declared that she would never return.</p><p>“All other reasons aside, cocaine should retain its ban for its contribution to musical theatre,” came the beautiful sound of a familiar, French-accented voice, and Aimé looked up as he pulled his hat onto his hand, dragging the wool edge down around his ears. “For example—"</p><p>“That is not an intelligent contribution to the conversation, and even if it were, it has been thirty-nine <em>years</em>,” said Colm, in long-suffering tones, his forehead pressed against the arm of the third brother. “If I hear you give me your speech about <em>Cats</em> one more time, Jean, I will sew your mouth shut.”</p><p><em>Jean</em>. Standing in the queue between Colm and the older brother, Jean was dressed, for the first time since Aimé had laid eyes on him, in a t-shirt, and there were some drabs of black and silver paint staining his wrists and forearms: the t-shirt was printed with a complicated design of the flag of Haiti, and in a white banner underneath the coat of arms was written <strong>L’UNION FAIT LA FORCE</strong>. On his bare arms, which Aimé had never before seen, were two or three scattered scars like the one under his eye.</p><p>“I enjoyed it,” said the third brother in flat, emotionless tones. “I thought the choreography was inspired.” Jean whirled on his brothers, his expression a mask of fervent rage, and only marginally deflated when came the flat addition: “Kidding.”</p><p>Aimé smiled to himself as he put his hands in his pockets, and he stepped out into the street, putting his hands to his bicycle lock and clicking it open with a subtly drawn symbol on the metal chain, dropping it into his front basket before mounting his saddle.</p><p>For a few blissful moments, he thought only of the angel Jean, of his delicate wrists and the strange scars on his arms, of his accent, and his fiercely defended opinions. He remembered the naggin before his thoughts returned to his mother and father, and that was a small relief.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>It was a sunny day, and Father Byrne sipped at his cup of tea, across from Jean-Pierre at the patio table. He had looked out over Colm’s carefully segmented beds of now growing vegetables and herbs, and had already examined with interest the greenhouse that Colm had built at the base of the garden.</p><p>In the past few weeks, Colm had spent most of his time working on the garden – the solar panels were now installed on the roof, as was their water run-off system in the gutters, and as usual, he’d sorted out a simple irrigation system for the crop beds that ran in rows in the back garden, and from the ceiling in the greenhouse from a box of old shower heads an artist he’d met on Grafton Street had had stocked away.</p><p>The greenhouse was a decent size, dominating the far end of the back garden, and he’d been careful to reinforce its walls as much as possible, with Jean-Pierre’s enchanting assistance. He had some good photos, too, of Jean-Pierre perched on the top of the greenhouse’s sloping rooves, one leg hanging down from the central roof beam, his tongue sticking out of his mouth as he carved the slate on top of it with intricate symbols.</p><p>They had this sort of thing down pat, after so many homes, so many greenhouses, so many gardens, but he always liked to make sure he was watching when Jean-Pierre scaled rooves regardless just in case he fell. It was one thing, when he was falling from a great height – he could throw his wings out and glide – but a fall from six feet, from ten? Jean-Pierre had broken more than enough bones in his lifetime for Colm to want to see him break any more.</p><p>The back garden, at least, was pretty much complete in its design – the greenhouse was built, his seeds were sown and his plants set to root, the compost bin was made, reinforced, and in place, and as well as laying down a small, square patio coming off the porch and the kitchen windows, with a table and chairs, he’d set up a pull-down awning so that Jean-Pierre and Asmodeus could sit outside with their books even when it rained – and, more crucially as summer came in, so that Jean-Pierre wouldn’t burn in the sun.</p><p>As well as completing the enchantment for both yards, ensuring that all the fencing was primed and reinforced against rot, certain pests both magical and mundane, and other incidental damage, Jean-Pierre had created a few gaps in the wood for hedgehogs and foxes, and had given Colm very clear instructions as to the sort of birdfeeders he wanted to hang from the trees.</p><p>Already, the back garden looked as though it had come quite to life – it was just a shame, Colm supposed, that the front yard was so bare so far, but he’d start planting a few more rows of vegetables soon, and he’d fill the rest with flowers and herbs.</p><p>He said much of this to Father Byrne, who listened with polite interest – throughout the process of blessing the house, he had been stiff and overly formal, but now that the conversation had turned to gardening, he seemed the slightest bit more at ease.</p><p>“You grew up in a keen gardening household, I take it?” Father Byrne asked, and Colm smiled, shaking his head.</p><p>“I grew up not too far from Cathair Dónall, spent a lot of my years there on one fishing boat or other, and when not fishing, working with sheep and cattle, so. I learned how to grow vegetables later.”</p><p>“And you, you don’t garden?” Father Byrne asked Jean-Pierre, who smiled, one finger idly circling the rim of his mug.</p><p>“I came to this earth from a wheat farm,” he said softly, “but I confess, Father, I am far better at arranging flowers than encouraging them to grow.”</p><p>Father Byrne did not laugh, but he gave a small smile. It was the weak smile of a man out of practice, and Colm felt the hopelessness, the despair, that radiated from the man in waves. Asmodeus didn’t always pick out exactly the same sort of priest, and Colm knew that – the last two had been <em>angry</em>, angry with the priesthood, with the Pope, with God.</p><p>Colm didn’t know that James Byrne was capable of anger – the capacity for it seemed to have been long-since beaten out of him.</p><p>There wasn’t anything to be done about it – and, Jean-Pierre had pointed out last night, half-asleep as Colm had watched a film that Jean-Pierre had picked,  that sometimes, after Asmodeus was done with them, the men he selected were better off.</p><p>Colm thought “better off” was debatable, to say the least.</p><p>“Oh,” said Father Byrne, stiffening like a cat met with a stranger as Asmodeus stepped out from the door of the new porch, the step letting out a subtle, quiet creak as his weight touched against it. “We usually like to have all the residents in a home present for the house blessing.”</p><p>“I’m not Catholic,” Asmodeus murmured, not taking his eyes away from Byrne for a moment, and then added, with a steel-sharp smile, “I just thought I’d come say hello.”</p><p>In the early evening light, no doubt dressed in the tightest red shirt he could find in his wardrobe – although all of Asmodeus’ shirts were tight, and even his thick woollen cardigans were tailored – Asmodeus looked unspeakably, inhumanly perfect, his teeth white, his skin shining coldly under the warmth of the sunlight, his green eyes shining.</p><p>Byrne radiated a gut-stabbing twist of want, of desire, before the wave of self-loathing quickly followed, and the priest seemed to all but drown in it. Watching his lips part, his tongue shifting dumbly in his mouth, Colm took fleeting pity on him, and said, “This is our brother, Father Byrne, his name is Ashley. Ash, this is Father Byrne.”</p><p>Byrne shakily put his mug of tea aside, and hurriedly shook Asmodeus’ hand, as though he thought Asmodeus’ hand might burn him.</p><p>“Padraic speaks very highly of you,” Asmodeus said, keeping hold of Byrne’s hand just a second longer than he needed to, and again, the inner grapple between want and shame came off of Byrne in waves. “He said your Mass on Friday was beautifully delivered.”</p><p>“You— You know the Giolla Chriosts?”</p><p>“Of course,” Asmodeus said smoothly, finally releasing Byrne’s hand and feigning complete innocence as Byrne snatched back his hand, holding it against his belly.</p><p>“They’re our cousins,” Jean-Pierre said softly, and Byrne nodded his head, not looking pleased.</p><p>“Well, I, ah, I need to drive back to St Fiachra’s for our evening’s work. Thank you kindly for your hospitality, Colm, Jean.”</p><p>“Oh, Father,” Asmodeus said, sweet as poisoned honey, “I <em>hate</em> to impose on you, but could I ask you to give me a lift? You needn’t make any unnecessary stops – I was going to be going in St Fiachra’s direction in any case.”</p><p>Cold terror crystalised in Byrne’s chest, and Colm wondered at the strength of the man’s dislike for himself, felt own his fingers twitch with the need to reach out and try to ease some of that off him, but Asmodeus met Colm’s gaze over Byrne’s shoulder, and Colm spread his hand in a gesture of peace. He knew better than to get between a man and his meal, and while he didn’t know <em>precisely</em> what Asmodeus got out of this particular exercise, he tried to tell himself it was much like that.</p><p>“Of course,” said Byrne, powerlessly.</p><p>Asmodeus’ fingers brushed the front of Byrne’s black shirt, and Colm heard the priest gasp.</p><p>“You’re very kind, Father Byrne. Please, do lead the way.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre reached for Asmodeus’ wrist before he passed back into the house, and Asmodeus paused to look at him. Colm wondered, for a moment, if Jean-Pierre was actually going to tell him to stop – if <em>Jean</em> said it, Asmodeus actually might budge – but Jean just said, in a wheedling tone, “Will you pick me up some pineapple juice?”</p><p>“Yes,” Asmodeus said, squeezing Jean’s hand, and Colm suppressed the urge to roll his eyes as Asmodeus closed the door quietly behind him, stepping into the house after Byrne.</p><p>“The priest in Thessaloniki killed himself. Do you think Father Byrne will?” Jean-Pierre asked quietly.</p><p>“The one in Thessaloniki was a monk, not a priest – and no, or at least, Asmodeus won’t encourage him to.”</p><p>“He encouraged the monk to?”</p><p>“He’d raped four women. The only reason Asmodeus didn’t kill him himself was because he’s fussy about the mess.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre looked thoughtful, drawing his knees up to his chest and leaning back in his chair, his arms wrapped loosely around his legs. “I’d have done it,” he said quietly. “If I’d known. But Father Byrne isn’t like that, is he?”</p><p>“I don’t think so,” Colm said quietly. “I only got impressions, but…” <em>the dark room again, too tight, too confining, the stone painful under his knees; the split down his back from the belt; the hand on the back of his neck as his head was shoved down against the desktop, the tears hot on his cheeks</em>… “I don’t think he’s ever hurt anybody in his life. Been hurt. Not the other way around.”</p><p>“It’s one thing when he picks the cruel ones and wants to break them,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “I don’t see why he feels the need to pick broken ones and break them further.”</p><p><em>As if you’re any better</em>, Colm almost said, but thought better of it.</p><p>“Are you going to stop him?” Colm asked.</p><p>“No,” Jean said. “Are you?”</p><p>“Richer than my blood to try.”</p><p>Jean nodded, and Colm felt the pensive shift in the other man’s mood, moving forward, closer. Jean-Pierre didn’t say anything, just looked up to meet Colm’s gaze, and Colm said, in a quiet voice, “You want to go do something?”</p><p>“Do something?”</p><p>“Bowling and the arcade?” Jean-Pierre hesitated, his brow furrowing, and Colm added, “There’s no point waiting for him. Even if we were here when he came home, we wouldn’t want to hear it, and he wouldn’t want to tell us.”</p><p>“You think he’s going to fuck him?”</p><p>“I don’t know, Jean. Probably. It’s what he does.”</p><p>Standing reluctantly to his feet, Jean leaned on Colm’s arm as they made their way back into the house. “I just wish I knew what he was thinking sometimes.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm said lowly. “Me too.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>There was a three for ten on craft beers, which would be all well and dandy, if Aimé cared even remotely about the taste of the beer he drank, which in all truth, he didn’t. He wasn’t entirely sure he had many taste buds left.</p><p>The only reason he drank beer in the park was because it was easier for the guards to shrug off than a bottle of wine, which was naturally what he preferred, and what he tended to drink in the comfort of his own home. There was the vodka, but that was really for emergency scenarios, such as talking to his mother on the phone, or meeting her in person or, not irregularly, thinking about her.</p><p>And as for his father – well, one needed stronger stuff than alcohol to deal with <em>that</em>, and he couldn’t buy it in an off-license.</p><p>He was tapping his card against the machine when the bell over the door rang, and he heard the angel say to his brother, “Yes, I remember how to make it, but why can’t you do it?”</p><p>“Because the last time I tried that boy nearly went blind, and you make it taste nicer.”</p><p>“What sort of Irishman are you?”</p><p>“You want to talk nation to nation? Without looking at that shelf behind you, tell me three kinds of wine.”</p><p>In the reflected screen of the glass casing over the expensive whiskeys behind the sales counter, Aimé saw Jean pout, pushing out his pretty lips and looking at it his brother with a mulish expression on his face. “… Touché. I’ll make your poitín.”</p><p>The brother – Colm, of course – smiled, putting his hands in a loose prayer position and pointing them at the other man. Under his arm, held between his hip and his elbow, was a toy black rabbit. “<em>Thank you</em>.”</p><p>Aimé packed his wine into a paper bag, loosely settling it under his arm, and stepped aside, ostensibly to look at the raffle the off-license was doing to raise money for the local children’s hospital, and he picked his pen out of his pocket, writing down his name and number on the piece of paper as he watched Jean lean back against one of store’s columns, his arms loosely crossed over his chest, his expression bored.</p><p>He wasn’t even feigning interest as Colm picked through the craft beers on sale, examining and comparing them carefully, his brow furrowed in thought.</p><p>It would be easy, Aimé supposed, to walk up to him, and say, “So, you don’t drink?” It would be easy, too, to comment on his jumper – an oversized woollen object emblazoned with <strong>TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ</strong>, which the cashier was eyeing uncertainly, and which Aimé knew belonged to Colm, because he had seen him wearing it a few weeks back, and it could have fit Jean twice over. It <em>would</em> be easy, if he was drunk enough.</p><p>At the moment, he was astoundingly, painfully sober.</p><p>“Here,” he muttered to the cashier, handing over a ten Euro note and taking his raffle tickets.</p><p>“Good luck,” the cashier said.</p><p>“I don’t win things like that,” Aimé said, with a grin, watching the cashier laugh. “But it’s for the kids, right?”</p><p>“Sure, man. G’night.”</p><p>He made sure to look past the angel as he left the store to find his bike.</p><p>It was going to rain soon.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>“I’m going to go get a car tomorrow. You want to come?”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Guy at the dealership is gay.”</p><p>“You want to use me as bait to get a cheaper price on your car?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t call you bait, Jean. More like… window dressing.”</p><p>“You can’t do it yourself?”</p><p>“I’m not his type.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre considered the question, his lips loosely pressed together, his fingers tapping against the chair in front of him. The bus was mostly empty, at this time of the evening – most people were heading <em>into</em> the city, not out of it – and they sat together toward the front of it.</p><p>Bowling had been good, Colm thought – they’d had a good time, and Jean had won enough tickets on the machines in the arcade to take home a ridiculously large teddy rabbit, which he now had in his lap, one arm wrapped around it to keep it in place.</p><p>It had been strange, going out while Asmodeus was still home. Most of the year, Asmodeus was travelling all around the world, came back only for the holidays, but while he was home, the three of them normally did everything together – it had felt like a strange preview of events to come, when Asmodeus was off on the other side of the world, just the two of them together.</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said, “if we can go to the Tayto Park this winter – when Benedictine is here for Christmas.”</p><p>God save Colm O’Beaglaoich from his brother’s love of theme parks. How it could be possible that the man should set foot on a boat and immediately be ready to vomit his guts out, but have no issue being strapped into a motorised death trap and spun in every direction, Colm would never know – and Benedictine, he well knew, was even more of a thrill-seeker than Jean was.</p><p>“<em>Christ</em>, Jean.”</p><p>“Those are my terms,” Jean said simply, looking out of the window. “You can choose to accept them or not.”</p><p>“Accepted,” Colm muttered, and Jean shook his hand when Colm begrudgingly offered it.</p><p>“You don’t have to come on the rides,” Jean said. “Benedictine isn’t scared of them like you are.”</p><p>“I’m not <em>scared</em> of them—”</p><p>“You were scared of the log flume in Paris.”</p><p>“It was a thirteen metre drop!”</p><p>“That’s not so high.”</p><p>“Not for a man that can <em>fly, </em>no!” Colm hissed, and Jean laughed, tipping his head back against the chair’s headrest, and squeezing his toy rabbit against his chest. “Can I ask you a question?”</p><p>Jean pursed his lips. “About Asmodeus?”</p><p>“No,” Colm said. “Why, you’re worried I’m gonna ask you about him?”</p><p>“No,” he said haltingly, fidgeting in his seat. “No. Just…”</p><p>“You don’t want to talk about it.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Okay. It’s not about that.”</p><p>“Bon.”</p><p>“It’s about that man in the off-license.”</p><p>“What man?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre was good at feigning innocence. He was a good actor in general, was skilled beyond measure at almost every aspect of day-to-day theatre, and Colm knew that he could disappear into a crowd with ease, could look like a completely different person given a second to change his hair and put on someone else’s coat, but in conversation like this, the deception was keener, somehow. Jean didn’t widen his eyes or exaggerate his expression: he just looked at Colm with curious interest writ on his face, and if Colm didn’t know Jean-Pierre inside-out, perhaps he might have been convinced.</p><p>“The one with the broken nose and the paint stains on his jeans. He was in that restaurant a while back, too, and we’ve seen him in the supermarket.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jean said conversationally, once more looking out of the window, and not at Colm’s face. “His name is Aimé Deverell – he reads philosophy at Trinity.”</p><p>“How do you know that?”</p><p>“I asked around. And once he dropped his wallet.”</p><p>“Dropped it?”</p><p>“Mmm.”</p><p>“From his pocket?”</p><p>“I presume so.”</p><p>“Into your delving fingers?”</p><p>“You’re a very suspicious man.”</p><p>“And you’re a pickpocket.” Jean-Pierre inhaled, watching the streets pass the by as the bus rolled onward, and Colm said, “He keeps <em>staring</em> at you. You know he does that, right? He keeps popping up wherever we go.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Is he stalking you?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Colm frowned. “Are <em>you</em> stalking <em>him</em>?”</p><p>“He paints in Stephen’s Green every day, so it’s not like I have to go looking,” Jean-Pierre said, now examining his painted fingernails. “I was talking to some students in the park, and then I looked him up on Facebook. Apparently he started a course in finance at Maynooth, but two years in he dropped out after he was hospitalised, and now he’s studying here. He’s a good artist. He paints landscapes and still life.”</p><p>“He wanted to talk to you today. He was radiating desire like a <em>beacon</em>.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“What do you mean, <em>yes</em>?”</p><p>“I mean, yes. I know.”</p><p>“Are you waiting for him to approach you?”</p><p>“Maybe.”</p><p>“I don’t understand.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t expect you to. This isn’t your area of expertise, is it?” It wasn’t as catty or angry as Jean-Pierre was capable of being, but it was sharp enough that Colm took pause, and he touched his brother’s cheek, looking at his face when Jean leaned his face into Colm’s palm. “Sorry,” he muttered.</p><p>“You’re going to approach him?”</p><p>“Yes, probably.”</p><p>“But not yet?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“I want him to stew.”</p><p>“And in the meantime, you’re making sure your paths keep crossing?”</p><p>“Tonight was a coincidence,” Jean said. “But otherwise… yes.”</p><p>“Why him?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s face fell, and he looked suddenly stricken as he looked to Colm’s face. “You don’t like him?”</p><p>Colm had no idea how to respond to the consternation. “I don’t know, I don’t know him. But he’s… Well, he’s not— is he attractive? His nose has been broken—”</p><p>“So has yours.”</p><p>“His eyes are different colours – they’re different <em>sizes</em>. His ears are too big for his head, his mouth is crooked, his fingers are <em>yellow</em> with fag tar. You like all that? You don’t think he’s ugly?”</p><p>“Basically every man is ugly compared to me,” Jean-Pierre said, as if it was the most reasonable thing to say in the world, and Colm leaned his fist against his mouth to keep from responding to it immediately. “And I like his face. I like his hands, too – and he has strong thighs.”</p><p>“There something wrong with him?”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Jean said sagely. “Lots of things.”</p><p>This sort of thing was beyond Colm’s understanding. He’d had sex before, certainly – he’d had sex with men, women, had sex with other people entirely. Sex was… sex. It was alright, he thought. He liked the intimacy of it, liked the way people relaxed and got vulnerable when they were having sex, but he didn’t have, he didn’t think, the drive that some people had for it.</p><p>He definitely didn’t understand Asmodeus – Asmodeus had sex with all kinds of men, would pick people up regularly just for sex, and then he’d carve out a special routine for sex with men of the cloth, if he thought sex would help them lose faith in the priesthood. Mostly, anyway. There was one man in England, Colm knew, that Asmodeus had sex with regularly, and he wasn’t a priest or a monk – he was, Colm was fairly certain, an atheist – and Colm didn’t understand <em>that</em> relationship either.</p><p>And Jean, Jean liked romance. He liked to find the perfect man for himself, and keep him for decades, assuming all went well – he liked the commitment from a man, liked being the centre of his life and attention, liked to have someone devoted to him.</p><p>That was how Asmodeus had explained it. There was an irony, really, in Colm needing Asmodeus to interpret the emotions of Jean-Pierre.</p><p>Aimé wasn’t good-looking, and just from seeing him in passing, Colm was certain he was an alcoholic, and knew that he smoked like a chimney: this was without even considering the emotions that came off him, the anger, the loneliness, the powerlessness, the fatigue, the sheer, weighted depression.</p><p>“He has no affection for life at all,” Colm said quietly. “He’s depressed, and an addict.”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre agreed. “Yes, I know.”</p><p>“And if you save him from all that, what, he loves you more?”</p><p>“I don’t really think about that,” Jean said softly. “This is our stop.”</p><p>Colm didn’t get the opportunity to pursue that particular line of questioning. Jean was a master of evasive manoeuvres.</p><p>Asmodeus was lying on the sofa when they got home, and Jean-Pierre clambered directly on top of him, sitting on top of his chest as Asmodeus dropped his book aside.</p><p>“Did you fuck him?” Jean asked.</p><p>“I’m not going to answer that,” Asmodeus said bluntly. “Padraic and Bedelia are coming over for dinner on Thursday.”</p><p>Colm saw the conflict in Jean’s face, torn between the want to know more about whatever Asmodeus was doing to that priest, whatever tactics he was employing to work him over – but he wanted to meet Padraic and Bedelia, it seemed, more than he wanted to know about Byrne.</p><p>“Okay,” Jean-Pierre said, finally.</p><p>Talk turned to what they’d serve for dinner.</p><p>Colm didn’t protest.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>PLEASE remember to comment and let me know what you think! </p><p>I'd especially like to hear people's opinions on the dynamic between Jean, Colm, and Asmodeus! Thank you!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“I don’t like to see you work in the field,” Jules said quietly, and pulled Jean-Pierre’s hands gently into his lap. It was late in the evening, and Marguerite was caring for the widow Boucher, who had hurt her back very badly this winter, and could scarcely be moved from her bed.</p><p>Jules and Jean-Pierre sat together on the bed pallet, cross-legged, Jean-Pierre with his wings around his shoulders, and Jules was delicately drawing circles on Jean-Pierre’s palms, soothing over the flesh that had been cut and caught at by the sheaths of wheat as they cut it back, tied it, and baled it aside.</p><p>“I like it,” Jean-Pierre said. “I do not like to be idle.”</p><p>“That is good,” Jules murmured, “but you’re a delicate thing, not made for this work. Look at the burn on your shoulders, your cheeks.”</p><p>“It doesn’t hurt me,” Jean-Pierre said, and hissed when Jules squeezed his hand.</p><p>“You oughtn’t lie,” Jules murmured, and Jean-Pierre slipped forward, sliding himself into Jules’ lap and straddling his thighs, his hands spreading on Jules’ chest, sliding over his shoulders.</p><p>This was new.</p><p>He had seen Paul, the farrier’s son, in the stable with Yvette Bisset, and had come home quite fascinated, although Marguerite had been scandalised when he had announced, with little compunction, that he had witnessed such an intimate embrace, and had remarked upon the colour of Miss Bisset’s nipples, and the difference between them and Jean-Pierre’s own.</p><p>He and Jules had kissed, once, some days previous – he had seen this in the village, too, had seen people press their mouths together as an expression of love or affection, and Jules had wanted him to kiss him, which was why he had done it – he could feel the desire, the want, that Jules felt.</p><p>He felt it now.</p><p>“Jean,” Jules whispered, as Jean slid his hands over Jules’ cheeks, their noses touching against one another. “We can’t.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“It’s a sin.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre tilted his head. “Am I not a holy creature?” he asked softly, breathing against Jules’ mouth as he curled his wings around the both of them, squeezing his knees against Jules’ hips and grinding his hips down against Jules’ own, listening to the hitched sound in Jules’ throat. “How can what I want be sin?”</p><p>Touching Jules’ skin, he could feel the aching want: <em>touch his skin, feel the softness of it, the heat; kiss over those strong thighs; slide his fingers</em>—</p><p>“You can’t use those wings as an excuse to take whatever you want, you know,” Jules said, trying to restrain himself, trying to keep his hands still, but his fingers were sliding slowly up Jean-Pierre’s back, underneath his shirt.</p><p>“Why not?” Jean-Pierre asked, and Jules laughed breathlessly. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I shouldn’t take anything – perhaps you should.”</p><p>“The world is not made better when you make a pun.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre grinned, leaning to slide his cheek against Jules’ own, mouthing at Jules’ neck when he felt the fleeting thought Jules couldn’t quite shove down again, and Jules hissed, taking a fistful of Jean-Pierre’s feathers and making him groan. “Shut me up, then,” Jean-Pierre said, tone only slightly strained, and Jules dragged his head back by the hair, and kissed him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre liked this.</p><p>He liked the warmth of Jules’ mouth under his tone, the wetness of his tongue, the touch of his hands as they pressed on the muscle in Jean-Pierre’s back, sliding up toward the base of his wings, and Jean-Pierre choked out a noise as Jules pressed on the muscle there, laughing when Jean cried out.</p><p>“Too much?” Jules asked: his cheeks were aglow with a hot flush.</p><p>“More,” Jean-Pierre said, pushing him back.</p><p>At the knock on the door, they both froze, and in a moment Jean-Pierre was on his feet and dragging his jacket around himself as his wings slipped suddenly from view, creating a strange, folding sensation between his shoulders.</p><p>It was Jules that stepped across the room, pressing the heel of his palm over his crotch, frustrated and ashamed – the former was useful, the latter a potential problem, and Jean-Pierre watched as Jules pulled open the door, looking up at the man that appeared in it.</p><p>He was dark-skinned, some sort of Moor, tall, broad, impossibly handsome, and dressed in well-made travellers’ clothes, and good shoes. There was a strange familiarity to him, and Jean-Pierre stepped slowly toward the door even as Jules said, “Can I help you?”</p><p>“I’m not here for you,” he said, using the informal pronoun, and Jean-Pierre saw the curl of Jules’ lip, but reached out and stopped him before he could respond, his fingers splayed on Jules’ shoulder.</p><p>“You’re— you’re here for me,” Jean-Pierre said softly, and then touched the stranger’s chest. Four months on Earth had been a slow and strange adjustment, and yet…</p><p>He felt the sudden cold temperature, the complete lack of feeling – he felt the <em>distance</em>, impossible, overwhelming. This was the sensation of the Host, from which Jean-Pierre had Fallen so completely, and he was surprised to find he didn’t belong to it, in the way he remembered.</p><p>“My name is Asmodeus,” the stranger said. “We’re brothers, you and I.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre pressed his palm to the centre of the warding wheel with a flare of power burning the base of his palm, and he didn’t flinch as every wall in the cellar flared bright white with the thousands of symbols painted over their surface, the beams in the ceiling following with a white flare a moment after.</p><p>Against one wall rested a row of carbines – they were old-fashioned weapons, centuries old, but over the years, Jean-Pierre had rebuilt and modified them over and over again, and they were more than fit for purpose. Every weapon in the room had been intricately enchanted, to turn on any hand that was not an angel’s, and with a fair few other features besides.</p><p>Blades and axes hung on one of the other long walls, with armour and warpaint stored in neat lockers: there were two chambers to the cellar, and Jean-Pierre – acting on the hard lessons learned from past experience – had stored Colm’s explosives in the secondary chamber, and primed the stone inside to withstand the force of anything short of a nuclear blast.</p><p>Dropping himself to sit on the central bench, one leg folded underneath him, his other hanging down, he began to pick up the pieces of his plate armour, which he’d brought down from the box in his wardrobe, to set on the mannequin beside Colm’s own.</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t usually wear armour.</p><p>He tended to paint his own, painting the right symbols on his body before priming them for wherever he was going – it was ideal for stealth, allowed him to move unencumbered and still fly, and it was ordinarily safer – but he kept it in good condition.</p><p>It was gold-plated, made for ceremony – it made him look like Saint Michael. He smiled slightly as he looked at his reflection in the breastplate, feeling the cool of the metal under his skin. It always looked so different, once there was blood on it.</p><p>“Are you going to wear that to dinner?” Asmodeus asked, descending the steps into the cellar.</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre said. “It looks silly when I wear it without my wings out, and I can’t fit at the dining table like that.”</p><p>“Because that’s the only reason you wouldn’t,” Asmodeus murmured, leaning to press a kiss to the top of Jean-Pierre’s head, and then he walked past him, dragging the mannequin closer on its rollers and taking the breastplate when Jean-Pierre gave it to him, sliding it around the mannequin’s carved torso, over top of the mail already settled over its shoulders.</p><p>For not being any sort of warrior himself, Asmodeus knew how to handle armour. Colm had modern things, Kevlar vests and such, and he was always mystified watching Jean dress himself when he wore this set – Asmodeus knew how it was worn, and how to treat it.</p><p>“Are they here yet?” Jean-Pierre asked, strapping his greaves into place on the mannequin, and Asmodeus shook his head.</p><p>“They’ll be here soon – Colm’s already put the fish in the oven. The armoury looks good. Complex work.” Jean-Pierre looked up at Asmodeus’ face as he pushed the mannequin back to its place in the corner of the room, at the grave expression there.</p><p>“What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Asmodeus said softly, and reached for Jean, cupping his cheeks and tilting Jean-Pierre’s head up for him to look down at properly. There was an ever-so-slight smile on his face, distant but genuine – as genuine as Asmodeus’ smiles ever could be – and Asmodeus’ thumb stroked over the side of Jean’s jaw. “I just love you and Colm very much, that’s all.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed. “Why?”</p><p>“Why now?” There was suspicion in Jean-Pierre’s tone, but worry twisted in his gut, and Asmodeus chuckled, patting his cheek.</p><p>“I just think about it when I see you enchant like this. There was a time when you never would have been able to so much as enchant a candle, and now, it feels like you could ward palaces.”</p><p>It was the sort of thing Asmodeus said, at times, the sort of thing that only sounded slightly off when you interrogated it, and Jean-Pierre felt himself frown, his brows furrowing, as he reached up and touched his hand to the back of Asmodeus’ own. He hadn’t learned to enchant until after he’d left France – Asmodeus had taught him bits and pieces, at first, but then he’d learned from every enchanter he could find, always took enchantment tutelage where it might be offered, and then performed his own experiments, trying different modes of enchantment against one another, seeing if they complemented or worked in opposition to each other’s effects. Jean-Pierre’s style was eclectic, layered, and complex – it was almost impossible for anyone to untangle without harming themselves in the process.</p><p>“Before I left France, you mean?”</p><p>The hesitation lasted less than a second. Asmodeus thought quickly on his feet, and was rarely caught out, but after so many years as he’d known him, Jean-Pierre flattered himself that he could see the catches from time to time, and he was certain he saw one now – it was usually on matters of the Host, on what had come before the Fall, that Asmodeus almost stumbled.</p><p>“Of course,” Asmodeus said smoothly, raising his eyebrows, his smile widening. “What else?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre could press on it, if he wanted. Asmodeus sometimes gave him answers – Jean-Pierre was special, even to him, and he could sometimes get Asmodeus to answer questions he wouldn’t answer from any other angel, even Colm.</p><p>He knew some things.</p><p>He knew that Asmodeus had some connection to the Host, that he’d never Fallen, like most other angels had – and he knew what other angels said about him, had heard some of the more ridiculous rumours that went around. Asmodeus was <em>old</em>, and he knew things no one else knew—</p><p>But Jean-Pierre knew better than most that it wasn’t always best to know things.</p><p>Ignorance was kinder, sometimes.</p><p>“Am I your favourite?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“You and Colm are.”</p><p>“But me first?”</p><p>Asmodeus leaned in, pressing their foreheads together for a moment, his nose touching against Jean-Pierre’s own, and Jean-Pierre groaned, but it didn’t sting, not really, and he let Asmodeus lead him up the stairs and out of the cellar.</p><p>Colm was in his favourite apron, the one that Jean-Pierre had made for him a good sixty years ago, now, from fabric printed all over with yellow roses. It made Jean-Pierre smile, until Colm leapt for him and grabbed his cheeks with his hands clad in oven gloves, beginning to layer kisses over his face, and Jean-Pierre shouted out and shoved Colm off him, pinning him to the kitchen floor when he didn’t give up.</p><p>Asmodeus re-entered the room to the sight of Jean-Pierre straddling his brother, his forearm shoved against Colm’s neck until he nearly choked, unable to push Jean-Pierre off of him – Colm was stronger than Jean-Pierre was, but that didn’t matter, when Jean-Pierre was the better at hand-to-hand.</p><p>There was a rumble of an engine outside.</p><p>“Go invite them in, Jean,” Asmodeus said mildly. “Stop strangling your brother.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>That night, Jean-Pierre and Jules lay down in the wood, laid down in a field of flowers. The moonlight shone strongly through the gaps in the trees above their head, and laid down on a spread blanket, Jean-Pierre’s skin glowed with the creamy shine of it, the feathers in his wings asheen with a golden glint.</p><p>Jules had pulled his breeches back on, couldn’t stand to be naked like Jean could, but Jean-Pierre did not believe he was opposed – he kept staring at Jean-Pierre’s body, his gaze roving over Jean-Pierre’s chest, his thighs, his arse, between his legs, and since they’d laid down together, Jules hadn’t drawn his fingers away from Jean-Pierre’s wings, stroking through the feathers.</p><p>Jean-Pierre slid to straddle Jules, sliding his hands over Jules’ breast where he lay on his back, and Jules slid his hands gently around Jean-Pierre’s waist, his fingers sliding over the smooth skin before sliding up higher, and dragging his fingers through the feathers at the base of his wings, and Jean-Pierre shivered, curling his wings in around them both.</p><p>“He’s an angel, then?”</p><p>“Yes. There are many of us, he says – a nation of us.”</p><p>Jules’ expression tightened, and Jean-Pierre felt the fear come off him, the uncertainty, the pain. “He’s going to take you away?”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “But— but there are things I’m entitled to, he says. Things I could do.”</p><p>“Entitlements? Land?”</p><p>“Not land,” Jean-Pierre said, leaning in closer, his elbows resting either side of Jules’ head, his fingers curling in his hair. He looked at the expression on Jules’ handsome face, the consternation shown in his knitted brows, felt the affection rest within his breast – affection for Jean-Pierre, the second-hand feeling intoxicating. “But a stipend, if I wanted it. A house in Montmartre, he suggested. School, if I wanted it. I told him I wanted to stay here.”</p><p>“School?” Jules asked, and he sat up, dropping Jean-Pierre back onto his thighs. “You could learn to read, you mean? Like a noble?”</p><p>“More than that,” Jean-Pierre said. “He said I could go to school to be a lawyer, or a doctor, but I want to stay h—”</p><p>“You’re <em>mad</em>,” Jules said, and Jean-Pierre was silent, looking at Jules’ face, at the indignation there. “Jean, you can’t say <em>no</em>.”</p><p>“Yes, I can,” Jean-Pierre said. “I don’t want to go.”</p><p>“You could be a lawyer, Jean – you could <em>help</em> people. You don’t want to do that? You could be a doctor – you could heal the sick.”</p><p>“But I want to stay here. He said I would have to go to Paris – I don’t want to go to Paris. I want to stay here with you, and Marguerite, and Anicroche.”</p><p>“I’d go with you,” Jules said, sudden, impulsive, but even as he said it, Jean-Pierre felt the strength of his thoughts show through: he felt Jules’ imagination of the two of them in some small apartment together, sharing a bed, a home, of Jean-Pierre learning medicine, <em>healing</em> people… “I would, you know. Wherever you wanted.”</p><p>“And Marguerite,” Jean-Pierre said. “And Anicroche.”</p><p>“You want to bring my mother to Paris? You realise I am implying we should elope?”</p><p>“We could have separate beds,” Jean-Pierre suggested, in all earnestness, and Jules laughed, and from him, Jean-Pierre felt helplessness, and humour, and love. The last was his favourite.</p><p>“I would not abandon you,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Nor Marguerite. Nor—”</p><p>“Nor Anicroche,” Jules finished for him. “You upon a stipend for your university, me working – Mother could make more money for her seamstress’ work in the city. We pay rent for this cottage, you know, from M. Metier, who owns the farm.”</p><p>“Marguerite would consent?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Maybe,” Jules said softly. “Only one way to find out.”</p><p>“Let’s go now,” Jean-Pierre said, standing to his feet, and laughing, Jules caught him by the wrist and tugged him down again, wrestling him into his back with his wings spread in the flowers.</p><p>“Not <em>just</em> yet,” Jules said, kissing the inside of Jean-Pierre’s thigh, and Jean-Pierre tangled his fingers in Jules’ hair as he dropped his head back on a pillow of forget-me-nots.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Bedelia Ní Giolla Chríost rode a motorcycle.</p><p>It rumbled to a stop outside the yard, a gigantic machine that was black and shining in the dim light of the clouded day. Bedelia herself was only a little taller than Colm, plump, with tresses of black hair that fell in waves around her shoulders when she pulled off her helmet, colour matched as it was to her sky blue leather suit.</p><p>She suited the motorcycle, perhaps because of the exercise it was in contrasts: Bedelia, round-cheeked and pretty, and the machine, square and huge beneath her.</p><p>What didn’t suit the motorcycle was Padraic Mac Giolla Chríost, who had been sat behind his daughter, and made the hulking machine seem ridiculously tiny. As he slowly dismounted, Jean-Pierre felt his mouth fall open, because Padraic must have been six foot six at the shortest, and had the shoulders of a cart horse.</p><p>Where his daughter was beautiful, a pear-shaped girl with the loveliest pear-coloured eyes, freckles scattered on her cheeks, Padraic was grizzled, and grim. A giant of a man, grey hair stubbling his cheeks and a permanent frown dragging at his mouth, he stared down at Jean-Pierre with cold, pear-coloured eyes, and Jean-Pierre stared up at him, struck dumb.</p><p>“You must be Jean-Pierre,” Bedelia said after a few moments had passed, and she shook his hand, beaming at him. “I’m Bedelia, and this is my father, Padraic – Paddy. Daddy, say hello.”</p><p>“Hello,” Padraic said obediently, with a slightly wry smile: his voice seemed to come from somewhere in the vicinity of his diaphragm, so low in pitch and with such a rumble to it that it reminded Jean-Pierre of thunder, and when Jean-Pierre shook his hand, he was delighted by how gigantic Padraic’s hand was in his own, almost twice the size of Jean-Pierre’s.</p><p>“Colm loves you very much – he says you’ve saved a lot of lives.”</p><p>Padraic gave a nod of his head, withdrawing his hand, and after a little silence, Jean-Pierre looked to Bedelia, who smiled.</p><p>“Asmodeus was telling us you’re a doctor, that you’re going to be retraining in September,” Bedelia said as they stepped inside, and as Asmodeus led Padraic through the hall, into other room, Bedelia drew off her jacket, hanging it up, before starting on the belt of her leather trousers.</p><p>She was wearing a pink floral dress underneath, and Jean-Pierre couldn’t help his smile.</p><p>“You’re a student at UCD?”</p><p>“Going into second year of radiography,” Bedelia said, nodding her head as she folded her trousers, putting them on the shelf under the coat rack. “I have a lot of anatomy modules this year – that must get old for you, after so many times doing it.”</p><p>“They learn new things all the time,” Jean-Pierre said, “and it never hurts to revise your knowledge in medicine. Your father encouraged you into the field?”</p><p>“He wanted me to be a vet,” Bedelia said, laughing as they moved into the other room. “When I was growing up, I wanted to be a doctor, and he tried to negotiate me down, but I wanted to help people.”</p><p><em>Growing up</em>.</p><p>Jean-Pierre itched to ask, <em>ached</em> to – barely any angels could say that, could say that they <em>grew up</em>, but now wasn’t the time, he knew.</p><p>“I hope you’re hungry,” Asmodeus said mildly as Bedelia came in, and Jean-Pierre didn’t miss the way she looked at Colm, the slight widening of her eyes, the part of her lips, the way her gaze dropped to his body; he didn’t miss, either, the way Padraic’s scowl suddenly deepened, or the way that Colm, evidently sensing the change of energy in the room, looked askance over his shoulder.</p><p>Jean-Pierre beamed.</p><p>He so loved family dinners.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“You’re going to take them with you,” said Asmodeus softly.</p><p>He had organised transport to Paris, for all of them, for the dog, too, and now he stood before Jean-Pierre where he sat cross-legged upon a fence post, carefully balanced there.</p><p>Asmodeus was smiling – he smiled very often, and yet so empty as he was of any feeling, it was difficult to ascertain precisely what his smiles meant – and yet, it also meant that conversations with him were strangely free of expectation, or of stress.</p><p>“They found me,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “They took me in.”</p><p>“And the farmer boy,” Asmodeus said. “You love him?”</p><p>It was not a question, Jean-Pierre did not think, at the time or even centuries later, that was intended to undercut how he felt. It was a question asked genuinely, with curiosity, with focus – it was a frank question.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Jean-Pierre said – it was a frank answer. “What does that feel like, love?”</p><p>Asmodeus shrugged his shoulders, shaking his head to say he didn’t know, and although the expression on his face was quite neutral, in it, Jean-Pierre saw, for the first time, a catch. “I think that’s the difference, between you and I – you’re closer to them, to humans. You can feel things more like they can.”</p><p>“You can’t?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Asmodeus said. “But I think I’d like to.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre tipped forward, off of the fence post, and against Asmodeus’ chest, letting the other man support his thighs and lift him easily, carrying him back toward the village, slung over one shoulder.</p><p>“Was it a choice?” asked Jean-Pierre. “When I fell? Did I choose to?”</p><p>“You don’t remember?”</p><p>“No. Should I?”</p><p>“No one does,” said Asmodeus softly.</p><p>“Not even you?”</p><p>A hesitation – the tiniest of hesitations, barely audible at all. “No,” said Asmodeus. “Not even me.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Colm liked cooking.</p><p>There was a satisfaction in growing your own fruit and vegetables, that much was true, and there was a satisfaction, too, in catching your own fish or rearing your own animals. He’d kept chickens from time to time, but Jean-Pierre was fussy about the noise they made, and also got very upset once they were too old to lay – Colm liked the idea of keeping a goat, but they didn’t have the space to keep one in the comfort it deserved, not here.</p><p>He missed fishing.</p><p>He’d thought about that as he’d been gutting the fish earlier, bought whole from the fishmonger’s – Asmodeus would eat meat if it was put in front of him, but most meat made Jean-Pierre very ill, and fish, at least, he could manage from time to time – had kept thinking about how much he’d used to enjoy the work, hard work, long work…</p><p>But times were different, now, and fishing was different, too.</p><p>Cooking remained the same.</p><p>With the three salmon descaled and laid whole on the bed of vegetables and cut potato, he put the whole mix in the oven, and busied himself with throwing a salad together as he heard the motorcycle draw up outside. It surprised him – a motorcycle wasn’t really old Padraic’s style, such a shy, quiet man as he was, no matter that he was such a giant.</p><p>He could still remember the first time he had met Padraic, passing through a village in Kildare on their way to Dublin. There had been an outbreak of some awful flu, and this giant of a man had come from nowhere, picked his way through them travelling together and grabbed Colm by the shoulder.</p><p>“You,” he had said, in his heavy, deep voice, squeezing so tight that Colm had actually wheezed out a nose. “Your friends can have that barn to stay the night in. You, you will help me.”</p><p>But for Asmodeus, he’d never met another angel before. Asmodeus, to the touch, had felt cold and empty and so, so distant, like someone was touching him whilst standing a hundred thousand miles away from him, but touching Padraic had been like experiencing <em>home</em>.</p><p>He’d felt like any human did, had a beating heart, feelings, but there was some deeper feeling, some shared connection, and Padraic’s great hand on his shoulder had felt like a sliver of connection he’d forgotten he’d lost.</p><p>He’d fallen just a few years before the Black Plague had hit Ireland, Colm knew that – he’d been a monk at the time, had worked on the grounds of the abbey in the Boyne Valley, and had moved to the city when people began to get sick. Angels didn’t get sick, after all, not like humans did, and he was immune to it – Padraic Mac Giolla Chríost radiated a sense of quiet melancholy, and why shouldn’t he?</p><p>He didn’t talk much.</p><p>He didn’t talk at all, really, unless he really had to – Colm well-remembered the hours they’d spent alongside one another, where Padraic would just point to the cool cloth or a particular poultice, or say quietly, “Water,” or “Blanket,” rather than a real sentence. After a while, he wouldn’t even need to say that.</p><p>Colm first felt the wave of engaged interest, a familiar one – he was used to people being attracted to him, used to feeling that electric thrum of excitement some people got when their eyes roamed down his body, took in his muscle—</p><p>Then, he felt disapproval from a more familiar source, and turned his head.</p><p>He looked between Bedelia, a lovely-looking girl with skin the colour of rosewood and freckles scattered on her cheeks, and the familiar figure of Padraic, who was glowering in Colm’s direction. The family resemblance between Padraic and Bedelia was a surprise – despite the fact that Padraic was square and old and grim, where Bedelia seemed all but ready to radiate sunshine, beyond the colour of their skin and eyes, he could see the similarities in the shapes of their shoulders, their chins, their eyebrows.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was beaming, evidently delighted, and Colm did his best to ignore him, concentrating on Bedelia as he pulled off his oven gloves, holding them under one arm as he put out his hand to shake.</p><p>“You must be Padraic’s daughter,” he said with a polite smile, not smiling as widely as he could, though what good it would do him when Padraic had an expression like that on his face, he didn’t know. “I’m Colm. I’ve known your father for <em>years</em>.”</p><p>“Everybody has,” Bedelia said, undeterred, and shook his hand hard.</p><p>Colm looked to Asmodeus for help.</p><p>“Why don’t we sit down?” Asmodeus asked in his easy, rumbling voice, and pulled out the chair at the dining table facing away from the kitchen for Bedelia, probably so it would be difficult for her to watch Colm move back and forth without actually turning her head.</p><p>“Thanks for inviting us,” Bedelia said brightly, and sat at the end of the table instead.</p><p>Asmodeus’ smile widened, and Colm put his attention back to the salad he’d been making.</p><p>“You have wings too, don’t you?” Bedelia asked Jean-Pierre as he sat down beside Padraic, and Jean beamed as he passed her the bread – bread which Jean-Pierre himself could only eat a little of at a time, although white bread was worse for him. “Did you used to find it difficult to find things you could eat?”</p><p>“Not particularly,” Jean said idly, one cheek pouching as he chewed slowly on a mouthful of bread that was more nut and grain than anything else, and Colm smiled to himself as he took up the salad bowl and put it on the table, letting Asmodeus begin serving it as he set the fish to rest. “I grew up on a wheat farm – we ate mostly vegetables, grains. We had a goat – the milk made me very sick, but we thought it was an allergy until later. Once Asmodeus found me, he gave me a, um, a pamphlet? With information about dietary needs.”</p><p>“A pamphlet? Did you have one of those, Daddy?”</p><p>Padraic shook his head. Colm watched Jean’s face, the confusion and slight frown twisting at his mouth when Padraic didn’t say a word, and Asmodeus said softly, “They were Padraic’s idea. When he Fell, monks took him in – he learned to read and write watching them copy out manuscripts. He started to do the same in the late sixteen-hundreds, I believe it was – pamphlets on wing-grooming, dietary requirements, common injuries and how to set them. They formed the basis for the literature the Embassy hands out even today.”</p><p>Jean beamed, and he reached out, touching Padraic’s shoulder. “I should thank you, then,” he said brightly, and Padraic, who had stiffened at the unexpected touch, hesitated, but then gave a small, tight smile.</p><p>“Was important,” Padraic rumbled, and Asmodeus’ smile surprised Colm in his warmth.</p><p>Asmodeus was like this with every angel Colm had ever met – knowledgeable about them and their lives, fond, easy. It made sense, Colm supposed. Asmodeus knew every angel that had ever Fallen.</p><p>“Daddy says winged angels are fairly common,” Bedelia said, in the form of a leading statement, and as she said it, she looked between Jean-Pierre and Asmodeus.</p><p>“There are many different kinds of angels,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “There are theories as to why – that the kind of power, or biology, an angel possesses when they Fall, is as a result of what, ah… What is the word? Asmodeus?”</p><p>“Garrison,” Asmodeus supplied between one mouthful of his salad and the next, and Jean nodded.</p><p>“Garrison,” he went on, “that they fell from. We were once all of one heavenly army, when we were each a part of the Host. There are discussions as to the spheres of the angels, or the precise separations, in different literature – theory is different between Catholics, Jews, Muslims… But none of us remembers the Host. No one recollects how once it was organised.”</p><p>Jean exhaled, picking a cherry tomato from his plate and feeling its weight between his thumb and forefinger, Colm looked at the expression of pensive consideration on his face, as he always did, when getting into the subject of angelic philosophy. “So people have posited that those of us who Fall with a pair of wings were once, ah, whatever would be called foot soldiers; some angels have two pairs, so they came from somewhere else. There are other biological differences in some angels, of course – peculiarities in the eyes, the bones, the other organs of the body; powers of transformation, elemental control, healing, empathy…”</p><p>“Not everyone believes it’s because of the rank we used to hold in the Host,” Colm said. Bedelia was listening intently, fascinated – Colm was aware of how many angels distrusted people like her, how isolated her and Padraic probably were from the rest of the family, even if they were still in the Embassy’s record. She probably hadn’t learned much of this before, hadn’t heard this kind of thing explained – or, more often, argued – a thousand times over. “Some people think it’s from the way our souls combined with human aspects when we came over from the Host. It’s kind of hard to nail these things down.”</p><p>Bedelia looked between Colm, Jean, and her father, and then looked to her left.</p><p>“Can I ask a question?” Bedelia asked. “Asmodeus?”</p><p>Asmodeus’ lips curved into a small, slow smile. He didn’t flinch away, didn’t look nervous or concerned. He never did, when people wanted to ask him questions, even if he thought they’d be difficult – especially if he thought they’d be difficult. “Of course,” Asmodeus said. “Always.”</p><p>Asmodeus described in three words.</p><p>“There are angels described in the Bible,” Bedelia said. “Gabriel, Michael, Raphael – other angels, too. But they weren’t Fallen.”</p><p>“You don’t think Jean or Colm could answer?”</p><p>“Not like you could,” Bedelia said, and Colm could see the hesitation, the slight uncertainty in her face as she said it, as if she wasn’t sure if she should be scared. “You’re old enough to have— to have met those angels. Right?”</p><p>Asmodeus, pleased, gave a small nod of his head.  “I am.</p><p>“You are familiar with different timestreams between magical dimensions, aren’t you? You know if you step into some of the fae lands, for example, time passes much more quickly, or much more slowly – someone might spend sixty years in a fae kingdom, when on Earth, only months have passed; you have heard stories, I expect, of someone spending days with the fae, and when they go back over the boundary they crossed, decades have gone by. You might think of the Earthly movement of time, compared to the movement of time in the different fae dimensions, or the infernal ones, as like rings around a pole. They each turn, but at different speeds, sometimes in different directions.”</p><p>Bedelia gave a small nod of her head, her lips pressed together, her brow furrowed in thought. She made the expression the same way her father did, Colm thought – he’d seen that expression a thousand times, watching Padraic combine ingredients under his pestle and mortar, or watching him sew closed a wound.</p><p>“The Host is different again. All of time occurs there at once, and simultaneously, no time passes whatsoever. It is a place both timeless and timeful. It is completely unlike that of Earth.”</p><p>“When I first Fell, I was disoriented,” Jean said softly, “because I remembered human events, but could not make sense of their order. It was difficult for me to digest, that events happened one after the other, and not all at once. I had only ever experienced linear time from the outside: to experience it as a participant was a large adjustment.”</p><p>“Many angels experience the same thing,” Asmodeus said. “No angel remembers what came before their Fall. It is an undeniable possibility that some of the angels named in such Biblical accounts had Fallen long before they could commit the actions they were named for. It is strange, you know – no one alive at that time could truly behold an angel. Angels were not contained in the way that humans are, that fae are, demons, even. They were pure energy – to look at one without some sort of lens or shade would be to not just burn out one’s eyes but to burn out one’s mind.</p><p>“You’re struggling now to comprehend a place, a dimension, where time does not pass. Imagine how it might feel to look upon a creature who is native to, and made up of, such a place. Much smaller things have sent people mad. Many of those who had looked upon or spoken to an angel could not entirely recollect, in the aftermath, precisely how their interaction occurred, or when, for how long. And no Fallen angel ever beheld a brother still a part of the Host.”</p><p>Bedelia looked down at her plate, her frown twisting her mouth. “So that’s— I don’t get it. When exactly did the Great Fall happen?”</p><p>“The Great Fall happened as <em>one</em> instance,” Asmodeus said. “But that event occurred in another dimension – the dimension from which angels come: the Host. Every angel Fell at once, but they Fell from that dimension to another, to Earth – Earth, where time is not a constant, but a linear stream. Thus, angels seem to Fall, from our perspective, one-by-one, time passing between each Fall and the next.</p><p>“Between two and four angels Fall per year, from our perspective – but really, every angel has already Fallen, and simultaneously, will not Fall for millennia.”</p><p>“This is hurting my head,” Bedelia said.</p><p>“Thinking about it has that effect,” Colm said, with a short laugh. “At the Celestial Museum in Harare they actually have diagrams, and you’d think they’d help, but honestly, it just makes it worse.”</p><p>“You’ve greeted every angel that’s Fallen?” Bedelia asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Asmodeus said. “Every single one.”</p><p>“And you delivered me.”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed, looking at Padraic. “Is that the word you use for it? Delivered?” As he spoke, he gestured with his hands, and Colm vaguely recognised it as some form of sign language, because the movements were too precise to just be general gestures.</p><p>Padraic laughed, and signed something back.</p><p>“He said he doesn’t know a better one,” Bedelia supplied, when Colm and Jean both looked confused.</p><p>“Yes,” Asmodeus said quietly. “I brought you home to Padraic, after you Fell – I’ve done the same with some other angelic children.”</p><p>“So, you Fell first?”</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said quietly. “There was one other angel, who Fell before I did – or, at the same time. Whichever way you want to look at it.”</p><p>Colm stared at Asmodeus, surprised, but Asmodeus didn’t look as though he was joking. He looked completely serious, but Colm had never heard him say that before, he didn’t think, and judging by Jean’s pouted lips and furrowed brow, he hadn’t, either.</p><p>He hadn’t asked, he didn’t think. That was the thing about Asmodeus – answers were usually forthcoming, but only after you asked.</p><p>“What happened to them? The other angel?”</p><p>Asmodeus sighed softly. “They died. I think perhaps it was to do with being the first angel to Fall – the first to break the barrier between Host and Earth, to be crammed into a corporeal body. The stress was too much.”</p><p>There was a pained regret in Asmodeus’ face, the way there almost always was, when thinking about an angel that had died. Death wasn’t common to angels – most of them could heal from any injury they sustained, and they rarely became sick. Angels that died usually made a choice to – it was a peaceful thing, as far as Colm had heard it told, angels dying on the same night their human spouses did, or growing old with human children they’d adopted. It wasn’t common, but it wasn’t unheard of.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Bedelia said in a quiet voice.</p><p>“Me too,” Asmodeus murmured. Colm wished he could reach out and really <em>feel</em> what he was feeling, wished he could skim whatever it was Asmodeus was thinking off the top of his thoughts, to know exactly what… But he couldn’t. He never could, could he?</p><p>“I’ll get the main course, shall I?” Colm asked, standing to his feet and moving back toward the kitchen.</p><p> “Did he have a name?” Jean asked.</p><p>“Jean,” Colm said.</p><p>“I’m just asking,” Jean said. “Some of the angels have names when they Fall, they remember their names. The first angel, the one that died, did they have a name?”</p><p>“Yes,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“Did you?” Bedelia asked.</p><p>“I have a name,” Asmodeus said softly.</p><p>“Asmodeus is a demon’s name. Not an angel’s.”</p><p>“It’s my name,” Asmodeus corrected her in little more than a whisper, with an uncharacteristic gravity. He always got like this, when people asked him about his name. “No one else’s.”</p><p>Padraic signed something across the table, his expression stern, and a quick conversation Colm couldn’t follow passed between him and Bedelia, before Bedelia spread her hands, and then looked at Asmodeus, rubbing her hand in a circle on her chest.</p><p>“You needn’t be sorry,” Asmodeus said. “Angels can always ask me questions: I cannot promise I’ll always answer them.”</p><p>“You never lie?” Bedelia asked.</p><p>“Not to you,” Asmodeus said. “Not to angels.”</p><p>“Do you remember?” Bedelia asked. “Before the Fall?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“What was it like?”</p><p>“It’s over,” Asmodeus said softly. “It doesn’t matter what came before. Thank you, Colm,” he said as Colm put some fish on his plate, and they each put themselves to their meals.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>After dinner, disappointed with the fact that Bedelia in general had seemed more interested in asking questions about angelic history and philosophy than in attempting to flirt with Colm, Jean-Pierre had rather given up on encouraging the latter. Now, where Padraic and Colm sat in their own armchairs, and Bedelia sat on the other sofa, Jean-Pierre sprawled over Colm’s lap, his head mashed against a cushion.</p><p>He felt very tired, having eaten as much as he had, and Colm was drawing idle circles on the back of his neck, making him droop even further down against the cushions. He listened to the conversation over his head, but – much like Padraic, who it turned out was virtually mute, unless really leaned on – he didn’t much participate.</p><p>“Soon?” Colm was asking.</p><p>“Quite soon,” Asmodeus said quietly.</p><p>“Do you know what sort of angel they’ll be?” Bedelia asked.</p><p>“A winged angel,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“And after they Fall, you’ll move on?”</p><p>“That’s right,” Asmodeus said. “I’ll come home at Christmas-time, and I do take breaks. I do assist other angels with one project or other, as I move one way and that.”</p><p>“And you?”</p><p>“Me?” Colm asked.</p><p>“What do you do? Jean-Pierre is going to university – will you?”</p><p>“No,” Colm said, curling his fingers through Jean-Pierre’s hair. “I’ll volunteer in the community. And Jean and I have our own work to do, as needed.”</p><p>“Your own work?” Bedelia repeated.</p><p>“We’re soldiers,” Jean-Pierre supplied idly. “Sometimes, our services are asked for.”</p><p>“Soldiers?” Bedelia asked. “Like— mercenaries? What about your Hippocratic oath?”</p><p>“We don’t usually kill people,” Jean-Pierre lied pleasantly. “And in the case that we do, it is not unlike cutting out a cancer.”</p><p>Bedelia twisted her mouth, glancing between Padraic, whose expression was unreadable, and Colm and Jean. Shifting in her seat, smoothing out the floral surface of her dress, she said, “Other angels… approve of that?”</p><p>“Some,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Angels do not share a uniform agreement of one thing and another. But you do not really care if angels dislike that I carry a carabine – you care that other angels might hate you.”</p><p>Bedelia pressed her lips together, looking wounded, and Colm slapped Jean-Pierre upside the head. Frowning, Jean-Pierre sat up, giving his brother a glare, and he watched as Padraic signed something to his daughter, watched the conversation pass between them. He had a few words of ASL, but it seemed quite separate to the Irish sign language, and he couldn’t follow it, although Asmodeus could, he thought.</p><p>Padraic was uncomfortable speaking aloud – he didn’t seem so hesitant, speaking with his hands.</p><p>“Other angels are uncertain of the likes of yourself,” Asmodeus broke in, as Bedelia’s signing got more frantic, “because they believe you to be Nephilim. You are not. You are an adult, now – you could walk amidst angels and no one would ever know you were a babe in arms when first you Fell.”</p><p>“Growing up,” Jean-Pierre said, “experiencing a childhood, a maturity – you have a privilege most angels never had. Much of their hostility toward you is jealousy, and nothing more.”</p><p>“Are you jealous?” Bedelia asked.</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Desperately. But even as I Fell as you did, who is to say I would have had a father so devoted, and so loving?”</p><p>To Jean-Pierre’s delighted surprise, Padraic’s dark cheeks darkened further, and he bowed his head slightly, plainly bashful at such praise upon his parenting abilities, and Bedelia smiled slightly.</p><p>“You can always come over to us,” Colm said. “If you want to learn more about angels – if you want to ask questions, or just watch television. You’ve grown up apart from other angels before now, but we’re open to you.”</p><p>“And you must teach us some of the Irish sign language,” Jean-Pierre said. “You learned it as a nurse?” He looked to Padraic as he asked the question, and Padraic shook his head. Jean-Pierre saw his lips move, twisting slightly, and said quickly, “You needn’t speak, if you do not wish to. If Asmodeus or Bedelia do not mind, you might sign, and they could interpret.”</p><p>Padraic huffed out a low, pleased sound, smiling in his strange, square way, and he signed very fluidly, fluently. He had strong, handsome hands.</p><p>“He learned it when he nursed in a convalescent home in the late 1800s,” Asmodeus said softly. “It was developed by Deaf Irish, but it feels natural to him in a way speaking never did. It is not uncomfortable, as speaking is. His hands make a better voice than his tongue. Now that he works with many children who rely on sign language, his fluency is an additional benefit.”</p><p>“He taught me sign language when I was a baby,” Bedelia said softly. “But now I use it every day. I’m very grateful.”</p><p>Padraic signed something, standing to his feet.</p><p>“He says it’s time to go,” Bedelia murmured, and then added, in a conspiratorial tone, “He doesn’t like to be complimented.”</p><p>“Please,” Padraic said hoarsely, and Bedelia laughed, standing to her feet.</p><p>“You must visit us again,” Jean-Pierre said, standing on top of the sofa to reach to kiss Padraic’s cheeks, making the old man laugh. “I want to compare wing spans.”</p><p>Padraic signed something, and Asmodeus said, “Mine are bigger.”</p><p>“I suspect almost everything of yours is bigger,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>One more sign, and a sardonically raised eyebrow. “Almost?” Asmodeus said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre giggled, and leaned back to let Colm shake Padraic’s hand.</p><p>Outside, Bedelia’s motorcycle rumbled back to life.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>It was not the worst hangover he’d ever had, but it would not be one he counted among his favourites.</p><p>His head pulsed with a sort of heavy, painful, thudding beat, and if someone had told him that the throbbing was coming from an apple-sized growth forced into the soft matter of his brain, he wouldn’t have had a hard time believing it. His mouth was so dry it almost made him gag to swallow, which he did not infrequently, and his hands were trembling so much that his exam essay looked like it had been written on an Etch-a-Sketch.</p><p>One neon-lit panel of the exam hall’s ceiling had a loose connection, and every few seconds would flicker wildly: hosted as it was to the top right hand of his vision, it had left Aimé in such a state of pain he’d almost wished for a sudden onset of epilepsy, because at least epilepsy might do you the good grace of killing you: his headache would only threaten to, and do so viscerally.</p><p>Suffice it to say, he did not leave the exam hall with the greatest of confidences in the essay he had written, but such was life.</p><p>As soon as he stepped out of the building, he flicked a cigarette out of its box, and put the butt of it in his mouth, shielding the tip from the breeze as he lit it. His lighter was on the way out, and took half a dozen increasingly irritable drags of his thumb against the flint, but he had a dozen or so more in the satchel on his bike – admittedly, several of those didn’t work either, but he could cross that bridge when he came to it.</p><p>The first rush of nicotine was not at all the relief that a 1950s advert might have him believe, but it was a small one, and he exhaled at the bitter, smoking rush over his tongue, leaning against the railing of the steps.</p><p>A pretty girl in a floral blouse gave him a foul look as she passed him – there were designated smoking areas on campus, little segregated areas to keep all the lung cancer in one contained spot – and Aimé responded with a beatific smile.</p><p>He needed a drink.</p><p>He didn’t think it would make all that much of a difference – even with a drink, it would take a while for the hangover to roll back, and he didn’t even think he was in the mood, at this point of the morning, to actually get drunk. It was a matter of habit, he supposed.</p><p>A wave of nausea washed over him, and as an experienced sailor weathering a real wave, he pressed his lips together, closing his eyes for a moment, and let it pass.</p><p>When he opened his eyes, he saw l’ange passing by.</p><p>He was not with either of his two brothers, this time: dressed in an oversized, red wool cardigan, which was belted around his narrow waist with a tacky little band of leather decorated with the French tricolour, he carried a stack of notebooks under one arm, and was holding a carrier bag from the university’s bookshop.</p><p>Ordinarily, Aimé had noticed, Jean wore simple skinny jeans or leggings, showing off the muscle of his legs and contrasting the massive jumper or cardigan inevitably hanging from around his shoulders, giving him the silhouette of a shiitake mushroom. Those jeans or leggings were normally plain, as much as they were sometimes brightly coloured: this pair was a new one, black, with white bones decorating them.</p><p>Aimé itched to shout something out, say something that might make l’ange turn and look up at him at the stop of the steps – ask if Halloween was a few months early, or if he had a costume party to get to, or <em>something</em>. Anything to just make l’ange stop, and look at him, say something back. His mouth felt thick and full and tasted of cigarettes, and his tongue, traitorously, would not move.</p><p>He didn’t have headphones in. Jean never had headphones in, that Aimé had seen, even when he was walking around on his own, and today he was wearing his hair loose, so that his curls bounced while he walked, and Aimé found himself wondering, of all things, what it smelled like.</p><p>Christ, he needed to actually <em>fuck</em> somebody.</p><p>Once l’ange had passed by, Aimé descended the steps and began to walk over to where he’d put his bike, his hands in his pockets, his cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. He wouldn’t drink anything, right away – he’d cycle over to the green, and start painting before he did anything else, get a few more canvases done. That Jean had been on campus, though, did mean that he was going to be attending Trinity in September, surely?</p><p>Aimé wondered what sort of thing he’d study – he would be a mature student, Aimé guessed, but he couldn’t actually be sure, because Jean had a sort of pretty tint to his features and a brightness in his eyes, and Aimé could as easily believe he was twenty as he could that he was thirty. He looked like a literature student, or maybe politics – or maybe, even, philosophy.</p><p>Aimé imagined offering him grinds. He did have good grades, all told – he often ended up doing half of his exams in the second sitting, but it had never been because he’d failed one, only because he’d been too smashed to attend. Even the exams he sat while drunk out of his mind, he normally did well on – if anything, his drunk essays seemed to do <em>better</em>.</p><p>The idea of Jean l’ange as some wide-eyed fresher, trying to wrap his pretty head around the arguments for and against the existence of God, letting himself be convinced to put the Aquinas aside for a little bit and be introduced to bodyshots instead?</p><p>Yeah.</p><p>That thought appealed.</p><p>Knowing his luck, it wouldn’t even be Jean that came to the university – it’d be Colm or the other one, and as handsome as they were, neither of them really had the brightly French, airheaded vibe l’ange gave off in spades.  Even if it was one of them, hopefully they’d bring their twink brother onto campus, because the three of them seemed close enough.</p><p>Unlocking his bike with a simple enchantment, he threw his leg over the saddle and started cycling, and told some girl with a tote bag to fuck off when she shouted at him to get on the cycle path – and then did.</p><p>It would be his final year, once he came back in September, and he really didn’t know what he was going to do afterward – if he kept up the current academic performance, he’d come out with a first, and that might make his dad crack a small smile (for a second), but wouldn’t actually get him a job.</p><p>His dad might want to get him in somewhere, but he couldn’t be fucked with that, putting on a suit and pretending to give a shit about whatever spreadsheet shite any company wanted from their men in suits – and they’d probably want him to shave.</p><p>He could sell more art, he supposed. People bought it in the park, now and then, and he’d be able to rent out a gallery easily enough, put some bigger pieces for sale. Maybe write some bollocksed up thinkpieces as a <em>classical artist</em> in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, say what millennials were fucking up now, not buying baroque oil paintings.</p><p>The mere thought lit a cheerful fire under the ever-bubbling pot of Aimé’s self-loathing.</p><p>He fished a miniature of sambuca out of the basket of his bike.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Weeks passed, one by one.</p><p>The garden flourished under Colm’s capable hands, and when August came slowly to its end, it was nothing like what it had been before: every inch of it bloomed with flowers or fruit-bearing bushes, or vegetables, or leaves, and the trees were beginning to ripen with the autumn crop. The greenhouses – of which there now a few, one the big glass one, and several more of the standing plastic ones – were alive with new vegetables, and Colm had taken to preparing crates to bring into a few different places in the city once a week.</p><p>After a week of complex manoeuvre with a few trellises, where Jean-Pierre had confidently nailed the frames into place and enchanted them appropriately as Colm had panicked twelve feet beneath him, Jean-Pierre and Asmodeus each had blackberries growing around their windows, and it would be a favourite pastime of Jean’s, come their ripening, to sit on his windowsill and pick at them as he read.</p><p>Jean had taken a few jobs recently, flying to and from each of them, and he was scrubbing the blood from underneath his fingernails when Colm came upon him in the kitchen, leaning on the counter.</p><p>“Benedictine said you took out a politician?”</p><p>“A mayor,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “And her husband.”</p><p>Colm glanced down at Jean-Pierre’s now mostly clean hands, at the red staining the metal surface of the sink. “I thought you were using that heart attack thing for assassinations now.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, considering his answer, and then said, lowly, “There was a last-minute change of plans.”</p><p>“A messy one?”</p><p>“I knew they were racists,” Jean-Pierre muttered, feeling his cheeks burn slightly with embarrassment – he’d never considered himself to have the greatest of self-control, but he didn’t ordinarily let his temper get the better of him. “She’d had ties to the KKK, her family. But I broke in via their basement, and among the Confederate memorabilia, there was a lot of child pornography. Not an expected aspect.”</p><p>Colm exhaled with a quiet whistle, putting his hand on Jean-Pierre’s upper arm and squeezing. “So?”</p><p>“I put her through the glass wall of their shower,” Jean-Pierre said, “and then stabbed him with a larger shard. A couple’s dispute gone far awry. I’m going to go bring that man home.”</p><p>Colm blinked at him, uncomprehending. “What man?”</p><p>“Aimé Deverell.”</p><p>Colm’s head tilted to the side, his lips parting. Jean-Pierre watched them move for a moment, silently repeating the name, before Colm shook his head. “Who?”</p><p>“The artist in St Stephen’s Green.”</p><p>Understanding dawned. “The one you’ve been stalking?”</p><p>“I’m going to bring him home,” Jean-Pierre repeated. “I am tired, and I wish to relax.”</p><p>“You can invite him home with you,” Colm said. “It doesn’t mean he’ll agree.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre turned to look at his brother’s face as he turned off the tap, beginning to dry off his hands. For a moment, Colm tried to look as though he believed what he’d just said, but then relented, huffing out a breath and giving Jean-Pierre an irritable look.</p><p>“You aren’t the only one who can charm people,” Jean-Pierre said, feeling his lips shift up into a small smile.</p><p>“People being dazzled by your looks isn’t the same as charming them, Jean.”</p><p>“Mmm,” Jean-Pierre hummed, squeezing Colm’s jaw affectionately. “Perhaps were I so plain as you, dear frère, I would agree with you.”</p><p>Colm slapped his hand away, but his smile was good-natured. “I’ll make myself scarce, then.”</p><p>“I’ll keep him in my bedroom.”</p><p>“That’s not the point,” Colm said.</p><p>“Where’s Asmodeus?”</p><p>“I don’t know, could be anywhere.”</p><p>Asmodeus didn’t have a phone. He didn’t even have an email address – the only way anyone could ever contact him was by proxy, through another angel or through that strange little man in Nottingham he always took up with, and while they could broadly assume he was still in Dublin – he would tell them if he had gone abroad – there was no reliable way of tracking his movements if he did not leave instructions.</p><p>Jean-Pierre at once envied and was maddened by his commitment to his technophobia.</p><p>“The church, I suppose,” Jean-Pierre said softly.</p><p>Asmodeus had been spending a good deal of time with Father Byrne recently – they had the sort of long, complicated conversations that Jean-Pierre had never witnessed, but had seen the aftermath of in other priests before, and twice, thus far, in Father Byrne. He was always flushed afterwards, with sweat shining on his brow, looking ready to crawl out of his skin, and failing that, the cloth that marked him as a man of God.</p><p>Colm pressed his lips together, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. “I’m going to go for a drive,” he decided.</p><p>“Will you drive me to St Stephen’s?” Jean-Pierre asked, pouting out his lips, and Colm sighed.</p><p>“Fine,” he said quietly. “Get your coat.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>It had been raining on and off all day, but that rarely deterred Aimé. The wind had not been too bad, and so nestled as he was under his golf umbrella, he could paint without getting too wet – the only problem was that the actual paintings might take longer to dry, but they always took ages anyway.</p><p>He sold fewer paintings, true, but he had long ago learned on wet days to focus on little canvases that were easy for someone to hide under their coats, and he’d still sold a few today.</p><p>The thought occurred, however distantly, that if he really started to take this <em>seriously,</em> he might never have to rely on money from his parents’ fund for him ever again, but the thought slipped away again as quickly as it had come.</p><p>There was little over a week before he’d be back attending lectures, and he was looking forward to the change in routine – there were a few university societies he regularly attended, and various haunts around the city that he liked, when populated with students.</p><p>It wasn’t that Aimé didn’t have friends: he did. Certainly, over the summer months, he’d had various invitations to birthday parties, seshes, and pub crawls; once or twice, he’d had people message him about exhibitions or debates. Mostly lads he’d slept with, although some girls, as well.</p><p>He’d ignored them all.</p><p>He had a phone, but he didn’t usually respond to text messages, nor emails – over the summer, he’d met up with Riordan Connolly, who was a lecturer in art history at UCD, twice, each time going to an exhibition, and then for pints. He’d gone on one date after a girl at the boxing gym had asked him to take her to dinner.</p><p>It was more social interaction than he regularly liked for his summers, in truth: he liked to spend his summers in relative isolation, painting, selling paintings, or drinking. Ideally, the latter would be optional, but in actuality, it was the only constant.</p><p>He’d drink less when he was back in university, probably – he did tend to drink more when he was on his own.</p><p>“A weeping willow?” said a voice beside him, and Aimé turned to stare at l’ange, who had bent his head slightly to come under Aimé’s umbrella.</p><p>Wet from the rain, his raincoat tied around his waist, his blouse was half-transparent and sticking to his chest, and his hair was damp and hanging around his shoulders. Moisture glistened on his skin, and this close-up, Aimé could see the pale blue colour of his eyes, and see just how pink his lips were.</p><p>Aimé looked to his canvas, where he’d been idly painting. The bark of the willow tree was a pale, grey-white, and its branches hung down to brush the surface of the running stream beside it, like someone’s fingers might.</p><p>“It’s beautiful,” said Jean l’ange softly. Aimé reached up, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and turning his head to blow away the smoke, and Jean said, breathlessly, “You’re the painter.”</p><p>“Just a painter,” Aimé said lowly. “No need for the definite article.”</p><p>Jean giggled like a coquette in a French romance novel, reaching out and brushing his fingers over Aimé’s chest, over the fabric of his t-shirt. Aimé wondered if this was really happening, or his libido had decided to take matters into his own hands, and give him the most unrealistic wet dream imaginable. He was aware for the first time that Jean was nearly a head taller than him, forcing Aimé to look up at his pretty face.</p><p>“Ah,” he said, one finger tracing the line of his sternum, “but you <em>are</em> the definite article. I see your paints, your brushes, and your skill…” Looking to the canvas again, he softly sighed, and Aimé took in the scents that clung to him, a sort of green-house ozone smell, the smell of fruit, and most of all, that strange note of frankincense he’d noticed in the past. “You do not sign your work?”</p><p>“Not until it’s done,” Aimé managed to say. “But my name is Aimé.”</p><p>“<em>Aimé</em>,” Jean purred, his hand spreading on Aimé’s chest now, his fingers impossibly warm. “And true, no doubt, mm?”</p><p>“What’s your name?” Aimé forced out. His grip on his paintbrush was so tight he worried it would snap.</p><p>“Jean-Pierre,” l’ange said. “Delacroix. You paint here every day – I’ve seen you.”</p><p>“I’ve seen you too,” Aimé said, and realised how creepy it sounded when Jean-Pierre’s blond brows raised in surprise. “Not that— Just, you know. Around the city.”</p><p>“You will not see me this week,” l’ange informed him. “I will start university soon, and I am planning to spend the week preparing by locking myself in my bedroom, wearing little to no clothes, and watching a boxset of an historical drama called <em>Rome</em>. Have you seen it?”</p><p>“Um,” Aimé said, “n— no.”</p><p>“Would you like to?”</p><p>“You— You did just say little to no clothes?”</p><p>“Sometimes I wear a kimono,” Jean-Pierre said. “If the air is too chill.” He smiled, his finger tracing down to the middle of Aimé’s torso, playing over his navel and making him shiver ticklishly. “I don’t expect that to be a problem.”</p><p>“Is this— I’m sorry, angelic twinks don’t normally approach me in the park for <em>Netflix</em> and chill,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Angelic?” Jean-Pierre repeated, his pretty lips forming an O.</p><p>“Is this a human trafficking thing?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, and gestured to the beer cans stacked beneath his easel. “Something tells me your organs aren’t worth selling,” he said sweetly. “But if you would rather not—”</p><p>“I didn’t say that,” Aimé said, beginning to rinse off his brushes, and Jean-Pierre beamed beside him. “You might hate me before the night is through.” He cursed himself for saying it as he rushed to pack his stuff away, but l’ange was undeterred, and simply laughed softly.</p><p>“Why would I hate you?” l’ange asked. “Are you a policeman?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“A conservative?”</p><p>“Well, no, but—”</p><p>“Then hurry,” Jean-Pierre said, pouting his pretty lips. “I must get out of these wet clothes.”</p><p>“Christ,” Aimé choked out.</p><p>It stopped raining by the time they were walking along to Aimé’s bike, and as Jean-Pierre watched him tie up his canvases under their little tarpaulin, he said, “I’m afraid I have one small compunction.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah, what’s that?”</p><p>“I do not like cigarettes in my home.”</p><p>Aimé, who had just been fishing the box of cigarettes out of his pocket, tossed the whole thing into the rubbish bin beside them. Jean-Pierre’s laugh was like a peal of bells, and Aimé stared at the pale column of his neck as rain drops slid down it, into his collarbone, and then beneath the transparent, sticking fabric of his blouse, where the skin seemed marked and messy, somehow.</p><p>Aimé wanted very much to trace the same path with his tongue, and if he got murdered or woke up from this insane dream before he got the opportunity, so be it.</p><p>“Come,” Jean-Pierre said brightly, taking his hand.</p><p>“I’ll try to,” Aimé mumbled, and wondered if he’d done a tab of something without meaning to.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“I like the enchantments you have on your bicycle lock,” Jean-Pierre said. They were on the bus, and l’ange had casually lifted Aimé’s arm and wrapped it around his shoulder, which did not at all take away from the sense of burgeoning unreality Aimé felt like he was being subjected to. He didn’t ordinarily sleep with people sober – and other people were rarely interested in him unless they were particularly drunk too, or somehow had self-esteem issues.</p><p>This, this was—</p><p>“I should’ve known you weren’t mundane,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre laughed against the side of his neck, his breath hot.</p><p>“No, you had it correct before,” he said idly. Before Aimé could ask what that meant, Jean-Pierre said, “I live with my brothers, but neither of them will be home.”</p><p>“How old are you?”</p><p>“Two-hundred-and-eighty-eight,” Jean-Pierre said mildly.</p><p>Aimé stared at him. “Oh.” He curled his hand in against Jean-Pierre’s neck, pressing on the warm, soft, yielding flesh there, looking at the contrast between his own olive skin and Jean-Pierre’s, which was pale as porcelain, and looked liable to bruise just as easily. Aimé wet his lip. “You’re not a vampire.”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre agreed.</p><p>“But— but not human?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>He’d been with a vampire, once. She’d bought one of his paintings from his stall at the witches’ market – he did that at Christmas – and given him her phone number, and it had been weird. She hadn’t even been that old, only fifty or sixty, but vampire biology was really different to a human’s – their flesh was cold and hard, something to do with the way their immune systems reacted to being a vampire, but Jean-Pierre wasn’t anything like that. He didn’t look fae, Aimé didn’t think, but you could never really tell if someone was fae, because that wasn’t really about being from one of the fae races – if someone grew up in the fae realms, that made them fae through-and-through.</p><p>He waited for l’ange to explain, to say something, but no explanation came – he looked contentedly out of the window and wound one of his hands through Aimé’s own, and Aimé wondered if he should be allowing this, if he was crazy – if he was crazy, so be it.</p><p>If he died muffled by porcelain flesh, he’d die happy – he didn’t think he’d ever really been happy before. It’d be a nice novelty.</p><p>“This is our stop,” Jean-Pierre said, and tugged Aimé off the bus (Aimé was aware of other people on the bus, old people and students and women with their shopping, looking at them curiously, at the twink leading his ugly boyfriend down the step and onto the pavement) and down the street.</p><p>L’ange’s garden was so full of vegetables, trees, and fruit that Aimé stumbled on the path, trying to look in every direction at once. He’d never seen a garden so chock-a-block with stuff like this in his life, and when he looked to the house itself, he saw that a few vines had been guided onto trellises up the side of the house, including blackberry brambles.</p><p>He felt the weight of the enchantment when he stepped over the threshold, and he exhaled, touching the wall. Most magic left a kind of signature on the end, but enchantment was ordinarily a subtle thing, a kind of current you might notice at the edge of the room if you concentrated, but Aimé had long-since had it ingrained in himself to look for proper ward structures – his father’s riches had been built in the magical security industry – and the weight of whatever was here was immense.</p><p>“It’s on the skirting boards,” Jean-Pierre said when he saw Aimé looking around, but judging by the slight quirk of his lips, he was pleased that Aimé had noticed. “I do it myself.”</p><p>“All of it?” Aimé found himself asking as he watched Jean-Pierre hang up his coat and start on the lacing of his boots, and he awkwardly began to copy him, leaning to undo his own boots.</p><p>“All of it. I blend a few styles.” As he spoke, Jean-Pierre was unlacing the front of his blouse, and drawing it over his head. His skin <em>did</em> have marks on it – now, able to actually see the bare flesh, Aimé could see that they weren’t just marks, but raised areas of scar tissue, scattered over his chest and belly, a few over his arms, as he’d seen before. “I have a unique signature, I am informed.”</p><p>“Right,” Aimé said, distracted, and let Jean-Pierre lead him up the stairs.</p><p>L’ange’s bedroom was everything Aimé could have imagined, not that imagining the actual bedroom had really come much into his imaginings – on the occasions he wanked himself off thinking about Jean-Pierre (which were more than he’d admit to) he’d barely put the effort into imagining the bed. Jean-Pierre had a small, impossibly cosy bedroom, dominated by an extremely large bed, and to one edge of the room was a wardrobe and a set of wall-mounted shelves, on one of which was a sleek television, and a few scattered trinkets and tchotchkes, many of them decorated with different small flags. There were many bookshelves, many of them filled with books older than Aimé was himself, and a messy desk scattered over with different pens and pencils, with a few sketches and notes made alongside some open textbooks.</p><p>There were more blankets in this room than there probably were in every home section of every <em>Penneys</em> in the country.</p><p>Stacked on shelves, neatly folded, messily thrown and tangled over the base of the bed, there were seemingly dozens of them, in different weights and textures – some were quilted, some were fleece or fur, a few were even silk and cotton top sheets, and these were all separate to the actual duvets on the bed, of which Aimé counted at least three.</p><p>Cushions cascaded over and off of l’ange’s bed – more a nest, really – in waves.</p><p>As Aimé slowly shut the door behind them with a quiet click – it had <em>Jean-Pierre</em> written on its brass plate – he watched Jean-Pierre shimmy out of his leggings, and as he stood there, naked, his hair brushing his shoulders, he carefully folded them, and placed them in the wicker laundry hamper.</p><p>“No scars on your arse,” Aimé said. He didn’t know why he said it – in retrospect, it didn’t seem like a very good idea to say.</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, turning to look at him, and Aimé stared at him, unable to tear his gaze away from his body. “Firing squads do not shoot at your behind. Will you come lie in bed with me?”</p><p>“Is this actually happening?”</p><p>“Mmm hmm,” Jean-Pierre said, reaching for Aimé’s hands, and tugged him into the bed, pushing him up against the gathered cushions. Aimé let himself guided and arranged into place, touching the scars scattered over Jean-Pierre’s thighs, his belly, his chest, as l’ange made himself comfortable, and then curled against Aimé’s side.</p><p>He turned on the television.</p><p>“Are we— are we actually going to watch <em>Rome</em>?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“You said you’d never seen it before,” Jean-Pierre said accusatively.</p><p>“I… haven’t,” Aimé said. His head was spinning, and his arm was curled around Jean-Pierre’s surprisingly muscled back, his hand resting on the curve of his small – but firm - arse.</p><p>Halfway into the second episode, l’ange switched the television off without warning, and started to kiss him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“Come here,” Jean-Pierre murmured, sliding his fingers against the back of Aimé’s neck and tugging Aimé up toward him. He’d stood to the edge of the bed, his every inch of skin still glistening with sweat, and as Aimé obediently stood on shaky legs, feeling exhausted right down to his bones, he looked down at the marks he’d left all over the pale, delicate column of l’ange’s neck. Jean-Pierre bruised easily, and the evidence was plain from where Aimé had sucked bruises into and grazed his teeth over the flesh of his throat, his shoulders, his collarbones. He felt dizzy with the evidence of it, as exhausted as he was from everything else, and when Jean-Pierre kissed him, he sighed into the other man’s mouth.</p><p>Aimé <em>did not</em> bruise easily, but his lips, he was quite certain, were visibly bruised.</p><p>He felt Jean-Pierre’s hands slide down his back, cupping his arse, before whipping behind him, and Aimé broke away from Jean-Pierre as he dragged the two top sheets off the bed, tossing them behind him.</p><p>Fascinated by the ease with which Jean-Pierre flicked his wrist, he watched as the laundry hamper leaned out from where it was hidden in a shelving unit, and the wet sheets folded themselves and fell inside it.</p><p>With one finger, his lips curved into a knife-sharp smirk, Jean-Pierre pushed Aimé back onto the bed, and Aimé fell freely, feeling himself bounce as he hit the layers of blankets still covering it.</p><p>“That mean we’re done?” Aimé asked, aware of how husky his voice was from the sex – God, he wanted a cigarette – and Jean-Pierre laughed, stretching out his arms above his head and rolling his shoulders, making the scars over his torso ripple and shift. Aimé wondered if he’d been joking about the firing squad.</p><p>“Your stamina needs work,” Jean-Pierre said casually, “but it will improve with time.”</p><p>“Time?” Aimé repeated, not quite comprehending, and then his gaze dropped to Jean-Pierre’s arse, red and marked from Aimé’s grabbing hands, as he stepped to the door.</p><p>“Would you like a cup of tea?” Jean-Pierre asked, raising his eyebrows and looking to Aimé expectantly. Jean-Pierre had wiped his front down with wet wipes from his side table, and had given Aimé some to do the same, but Aimé could see himself glistening on l’ange’s inner thighs.</p><p>“Sure,” he said, and Jean-Pierre padded out of the room, rubbing sleepily at one pretty blue eye.</p><p>Looking to the clock, which was a complicated cuckoo thing decorated in the French tricolour that did not, mercifully, chime the hour, Aimé saw that it was almost four – they’d gotten off the bus at a little past twelve. Naked as he was, his thighs aching, and feeling not unlike he’d been wrung dry, Aimé clumsily leaned over the edge of the bed, plucking his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and checking he had no missed texts before dropping it onto the bedside cabinet.</p><p>Ordinarily, left alone in the room of someone he’d just picked up, maybe he would have looked around a little, peered into drawers or examined the objects on shelves, but he was tired, and still not quite reckoning with what had just happened. This <em>was</em> real, he was fairly certain – what was real, then, was that the pretty twink he’d been seeing around town the past few weeks had come up to him, picked him up, made him watch a historical drama, and then ridden him for <em>hours</em>.</p><p>It didn’t really add up.</p><p>Aimé was almost dozing when Jean-Pierre came back into the room, and Aimé sat abruptly up as he placed a mug of tea on the bedside table beside him. “No milk, no sugar,” Jean-Pierre said, making Aimé raise his eyebrows in surprise, and fell on top of him.</p><p>Aimé let out a punched noise, sliding his hands around to touch l’ange’s lower back, and he marvelled at the expanse of smooth skin under his palms, at how warm he was, and how very light, despite the muscle packed on his body.</p><p>“Are you very hungry?” he asked, laying his chin against Aimé’s sternum and looking soulfully into Aimé’s eyes, and Aimé was taken away by the scent of frankincense that clung to him, mixing with the scent of the tea leaves on the air.</p><p>“No,” Aimé said. “I had a chicken roll before you came up to me.”</p><p>“Good,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and rolled to the side, curling himself in the crook of Aimé’s arm and putting his cheek on the hairy surface of Aimé’s rounded chest: with no more word said about it, Jean-Pierre picked up the TV remote, and put <em>Rome</em> back on.</p><p>Laughing at the absurdity of it all, Aimé dropped his head back on the pillow.</p><p>He didn’t mean to fall asleep. He only realised he had when the motion on top of him woke him up, and he looked through hazily lidded eyes up at Jean-Pierre, who was straddling Aimé’s belly as he dragged on a t-shirt, which was emblazoned with complicated Arabic text.</p><p>“That your brother’s?” Aimé asked, but he realised as Jean-Pierre pulled the hem around his waist that it was in his size, not his bigger brother’s, and Jean-Pierre glanced down at the t-shirt, then softly laughed at him.</p><p>“In niz bogzarad,” l’ange said, and even speaking this language, Aimé could hear his strong accent. “It is Persian. You must dress for dinner – my brother will not serve you if you are nude.”</p><p>“Won’t he?” Aimé asked groggily, but took his own t-shirt when Jean-Pierre pushed it into his hands, and watched as Jean-Pierre stood to pull on his leggings. He’d been asleep for an hour and a half, he thought, and he ached to have a drink – he felt very clear-headed, and he didn’t much care for the sensation. “Is this your big brother, or the little one?”</p><p>“Both would disapprove,” Jean-Pierre said idly. “It is bad manners to be naked at the dinner table, Aimé.”</p><p>It was such a strange statement, so sincerely expressed, that Aimé didn’t know how to respond to it, and therefore, did not try.</p><p>“Are all three of you— immortal?”</p><p>“No being of this world or the next is truly immortal,” Jean-Pierre said as Aimé dragged on his jeans, aware of how the tired ache had sort of solidified in his thighs, and finding himself glad he hadn’t cycled here. “The only thing truly eternal is an idea – and therefore, the soul.”</p><p>Aimé furrowed his brow slightly. Jean-Pierre really wasn’t the airhead he’d expected, and he was yet to find his rhythm – conversationally, that is – with him. “Is that you trying to dodge the question, or were you just distracted?”</p><p>“Oh,” Jean-Pierre said, looking at him with his lips parted, and Aimé watched the pink blush form on his white cheeks, watched him look demurely downward, as if he hadn’t spent several hours of the afternoon rearranging Aimé to his pleasure like a favourite sex doll – not that Aimé minded.</p><p>“Distracted,” he said, almost shyly. “We are each angels. You have met my kind before?”</p><p>“Not really,” Aimé said breathlessly, buttoning his trousers. An angel. Not just angelic, but actually, <em>actually</em>… Shit. “Just— You know, I’ve seen the, um, the Seraphic Choir perform a few times, at my father’s events. Never actually talked to any of them.”</p><p>“The Seraphic Choir have an extremely high booking fee,” Jean-Pierre murmured, his lips parting, his head tilting to the side as he examined Aimé. His expression was keen, thoughtful, concentrated: there was a calculated coldness in his eyes that made Aimé shiver, and want to take his clothes off again. “What manner of events were these?”</p><p>“<em>Jean!”</em> came the call from downstairs – it was Colm, the Irish brother. “Are you joining us, or not?”</p><p>“Come,” Jean-Pierre said pleasantly, and gestured for Aimé to follow him. Aimé glanced at his reflection in the dimmed screen of the TV, at his sex-mussed hair, at the clear hickeys the angel had left all the way up to his jaw-line, and he closed his eyes for a second, and then did as he was told.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre took the kettle off the hob, letting the tea steep as he heard the front door open and then slam closed, heard Colm’s footsteps as he crossed the threshold and came into the living room.</p><p>“Oh, good, you’re down here,” he said dryly to Jean-Pierre’s back. “How was the sex?”</p><p>“Good,” Jean-Pierre said. “He’s more generous than I expected.”</p><p>“Well, I expect he’s grateful,” Colm said, and Jean-Pierre shot him a frown over his shoulder, then looked back to the tea as it steeped.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had rather meant what he had said, before. He was impossibly beautiful, he knew, with his porcelain skin, his blue eyes, his lightly golden hair – he was not so ethereally handsome as Asmodeus, did not carry the magnetism he did, but often, people met him and were struck dumb by how lovely he was.</p><p>He had weaponised these good looks of his: he had charmed armies, gendarmeries, kings, with the beauty of his face, that no one should think of the knife behind his back.</p><p>Virtually everyone, in comparison to Jean-Pierre, might be considered ugly – and therefore, he had never troubled himself to dwell on how ugly people were in relation to one another, nor to think on it as something unpleasant.</p><p>Aimé was not unpleasant to look at. On the contrary, Jean-Pierre liked very much to look at his face, liked to trace the angles in it, to see it contort into one expression and the next – he looked forward to gleaning far more if it.</p><p>His features were homely, perhaps – he had heterochromia, one of his eyes a light-coloured hazel, not dark enough to be likened to gold, and the other one was a dark, dull green, the colour of the scum in pondwater. Jean-Pierre liked ponds. The pupil in his left eye – the green one – was somehow damaged, that the pupil did not constrict as the other did, but he didn’t think anisocoria was truly so troubling a condition, so long as it caused Aimé himself no pain.</p><p>He had particularly protuberant ears, but these were almost hidden by the thick muss of his dark hair; his nose was crooked with some scars on its bridge, and Jean-Pierre suspected, based on certain tell-tale scarring on one side of his face, that he had once dislocated his jaw. His stubble, which grew thick and with only a few patches, was made up of hard bristles. When he smiled, his lip didn’t form one complete curve, but weakened at a point, so that his mouth formed a crooked crescent.</p><p>Jean-Pierre rather liked this last quality most of all. There was something in that lopsided smile that triggered in him a desperate affection.</p><p>“Don’t call him ugly where he can hear,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “He’ll think I agree with you.”</p><p>“Did he even <em>ask</em> to use a condom?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre frowned at Colm, who was leaning back to look at Jean-Pierre’s thighs, and then he crossed his arms over his chest. “<em>No</em>.”</p><p>“That’s really a condemnation of sex education in this country,” Colm said.</p><p>“We can’t carry human disease.”</p><p>“That’s not the point,” Colm said. “He doesn’t know that.”</p><p>“I don’t like condoms.”</p><p>“It’s not about whether you like—” Colm huffed out an irritated sound, shaking his head, and he passed Jean-Pierre a mug when Jean held out his hand for one, watching as he poured his tea. “It’s not about that, Jean. How did you pick him up?”</p><p>“I told him I was going to watch <em>Rome</em> in the nude, and that he should come home with me.”</p><p>“That’s it?”</p><p>“Mmm hmm.”</p><p>“Surely you would worry that was— I don’t know, a sex trafficking thing.”</p><p>“He did raise that potential risk.”</p><p>“Idiot,” Colm muttered. “I’m going to put dinner on. You two going to join us in an hour and a half?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said. “I expect so.”</p><p>It was nice, when Aimé fell asleep beneath him. Despite the lingering stench of cigarette smoke, he mostly smelled of paint turps, oils, and the strangely dusty scent of rose-scented candles. He had a boxer’s body, fat packed loosely over his muscle, and Jean-Pierre found himself very pleased with the plush swell of his warm, hairy chest, and the curved pillow of his belly, which yielded under Jean-Pierre’s pressing fingers.</p><p>He liked very much the responsiveness of Aimé’s body, the way he arched at the press upon his shoulder muscles or his lower back – where, like Jean-Pierre, he carried much of his tension – and he liked the way Aimé gasped and hissed when Jean-Pierre touched his nipples, which were apparently very sensitive; the inner crease of his thighs was delightfully sensitive, too, and when Jean-Pierre bit him, his body drew back like a bowstring.</p><p>But he liked it like that, too, still and warm and steady beneath him.</p><p>He had made a good selection with Aimé, he thought, even as he pushed him toward wakefulness, when the time came for dinner.</p><p>Asmodeus was actually reading a newspaper when Jean-Pierre led Aimé down into the living area. It was Cherub’s Missive, an angelic publication written – as all angelic papers were – in a script knowable only to those who had lived before the Tower of Babel fell, which was a group made up mostly of angels.</p><p>“Don’t look at it too long,” Jean-Pierre said when he saw Aimé stare at the black symbols swimming on the grey pages, looking as though he were struggling to focus his eyes. “It is not for your comprehension, and you will only strain yourself.”</p><p>“That’s Enochian?”</p><p>“We don’t call it that,” Asmodeus said, and looked over his newspaper at Aimé, examining him critically over his reading glasses. He looked quite amusing, in the moment, some parodic representation of a disapproving father in a film, and Jean-Pierre chuckled to himself, waiting for a moment at the side of one of the chairs and looking at Aimé expectantly.</p><p>Aimé, for a long few moments, stared at him, uncomprehending. Jean-Pierre glanced down at the chair before meeting Aimé’s gaze, and made no further indication: seconds ticked by before Aimé, very slowly, not breaking eye contact with Jean-Pierre, walked forward, and pulled out the chair for him.</p><p>“So <em>gallant</em>,” Jean-Pierre praised him, cupping his cheek as Aimé looked at him as though he were a particularly complicated alien, and Jean-Pierre slipped into his seat, pulling it forward with him. “Aimé, this is Asmodeus, and that is Colm. Sit down.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Aimé sank down into the set place setting that had an empty glass in front of it, and not a pint of beer. Colm was pulling something out of the oven, and the smell was good – he was cooking a chicken, Aimé thought, but on the table was already set a platter of what looked like a mix of fresh fruit and raw vegetables, and Jean-Pierre was already filling his plate from it.</p><p>Aimé didn’t really know much about angels.</p><p>They were a magical people, that much was true, but they were kind of separate to the rest of magical society, in most countries – they formed their own groups and their own communities, in the areas where there were enough of them, and they were a very private people, didn’t talk much about their lives or their history with outsiders.</p><p>He knew that they were mostly immortal, that it was a big deal when one of them died – he knew that they pretty much exclusively Fell and started to live as adults, that there were almost no angel children. He knew that angels were a pretty powerful lobbying force, and that they supported no governments or regimes the world over – he knew there’d been one magical country in the 30s, after the First World War, that had attempted to form their own nation-state somewhere in Bavaria, and that the king was killed on the day of his coronation by an angel.</p><p>He only knew the latter because it was so often depicted in art – in magical card sets, an angel trumped a king, and two angels trumped an army, and the image of an angel in shining armour slitting the throat of a new king appeared a lot in modern art.</p><p>“Do you have any allergies, Aimé?” asked a voice from the kitchen, and Aimé looked up from his empty place setting to Colm, who was looking at him with a flat expression on his face.</p><p>“Uh, no,” he said lowly, and glanced to Jean-Pierre’s plate, which was decorated with a colourful array of fruit and veg; Asmodeus’ – wasn’t that a demon’s name? – plate had a few cherry tomatoes and pieces of cucumber scattered on the side even as Colm started setting down dishes of roasted vegetables, the chicken, which didn’t seem big enough for four people, a plate of roasted potatoes…</p><p>“Jean and De don’t eat meat,” Colm said as Asmodeus began spooning some cooked vegetables and potatoes onto his plate. “Well, Asmodeus does occasionally, but Jean, never. You’re not a vegetarian?”</p><p>“No,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Buíochas le Dia,” Colm muttered, beginning to cut a few slices off the chicken. He was a Kerryman, based off the thickness of his accent, and Aimé had to concentrate to understand what he said in English or Irish – he spoke loudly, but fast, and every word moulded into the next.</p><p>“Do you want an IPA or a summer ale?” asked Asmodeus, who had gotten to his feet.</p><p>“Um, a lager’s fine, if you have it,” Aimé said, and Asmodeus laughed. He had an English accent, and had a very deep, rich voice, every syllable sounding smooth and polished as he pronounced it.</p><p>“How does wine sound?” he asked, and Aimé shrugged his shoulders.</p><p>“Sure, okay, thanks,” he said, and after pouring his own glass of a thick red from a dark bottle, he stepped slowly around the table and poured Aimé some. Aimé could not see the logo on the bottle, nor the name of the wine, but he did see the date on his yellowed, peeling label: <em>1872.</em></p><p>Aimé looked from Asmodeus’ fingers, which were a rich rosewood colour, the fingernails kept in a state of perfect manicure, pink and healthy, up to his face, and the cold smile that drew at his handsome lips.</p><p>It felt uncomfortable to look at him for too long, somehow – it was like looking at the sun.</p><p>“Be careful,” Jean-Pierre said. “That wine is very strong.”</p><p>“Your friend is an alcoholic,” Asmodeus said as he stepped away, and Aimé felt his lips part in surprise, but Asmodeus spoke as if he was on Aimé’s side when he added, “I’m sure he knows better how to handle his liquor than you would, Jean.”</p><p>“Jean can’t drink alcohol,” Colm said, by way of explanation, and put a leg of chicken on Aimé’s plate alongside some of the slices of breast. “It makes him very sick.”</p><p>The wine was dry, oaky, and very smooth. Aimé wondered how much it was worth, and then wondered if that meant anything to people like Asmodeus.</p><p>When Colm was sat down, Aimé watched in horror as he reached across the table for Jean-Pierre’s hand, and offered to take Aimé’s. Aimé’s hesitation was apparently sufficient that he immediately gave up the gesture – Jean-Pierre hadn’t even offered his hand to Aimé – and Aimé sat in silence as the two of them said a quiet grace together, matching rhythms even though one of them spoke in Irish and the other in French.</p><p>“They don’t do this at every mealtime,” Asmodeus said from the other end of the table, his glasses back on his face so that he could read his weird, uncomfortable newspaper. “Only when we’re sat at table together – not, ordinarily, when we have company, but I suppose you don’t count.”</p><p>Aimé felt himself frown. “I don’t?”</p><p>“Oh, I shouldn’t take it as an insult,” Asmodeus said idly, not looking up. “I’m sure Jean doesn’t mean it as one.”</p><p>“Shut up, Asmodeus,” Jean-Pierre said, though two furious pin-pricks of red had appeared at the tops of his cheeks. “Aimé, you are a student?”</p><p>“Uh, yeah,” Aimé said, even as he copied the angels and picked up his fork to start eating. “I’m studying philosophy at Trinity. I think I’ve, uh, seen you on campus?”</p><p>“Yes, I shall be starting my medical degree in September.”</p><p>“Medicine?”</p><p>“Ouais,” Jean-Pierre said, and his foot touched against Aimé’s own under the table, making him jump. “This surprises you? My hands did not prove steady enough for your liking?”</p><p>“Uh—” Aimé stumbled, but when he looked to Colm and Asmodeus, neither of them seemed surprised or offended: Asmodeus barely seemed to notice that Jean-Pierre had said anything at all, and Colm rolled his eyes, but didn’t complain.</p><p>“Are you enjoying <em>Rome</em>?” Colm asked flatly.</p><p>“Sure,” Aimé said. He’d barely watched it.</p><p>“Mmm hmm,” Colm said, and looked back to his meal.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre was fastidious about the soundproofing he applied to his bedroom, both cutting out noise from the outside and ensuring no sound from the inside eked out. This was why Colm was entirely certain he could never hear Aimé and his brother doing whatever it was they were doing, even when he thought he heard a noise from upstairs.</p><p>What he could feel – because if Jean-Pierre had ever tried to find an enchantment to dampen this sort of thing on the walls, he’d never chosen to apply it – was the thrum of feeling and emotion that radiated from his room.</p><p>As Colm worked in the garden, kneeling on a mat as he carefully pruned and worked around his beds of potatoes, he could feel the twin oddities in the house: from Asmodeus’ room an oppressive coldness, a strange gap in his awareness, like a freezing blind spot; from Jean-Pierre’s, he felt Jean-Pierre’s haughty delight, his pleasure at having found a new toy, and in contrast, Aimé’s wonder, his gratitude, his uncertainty, his ecstasy.</p><p>It was not worship – not yet.</p><p>It would be.</p><p>It always ended up that way.</p><p>It had been that way with Manolis, with Bui, with Benoit, with Farhad, had even happened with Rupert – up until the end, at least. He couldn’t say what exactly had happened with Jules, Jean-Pierre’s <em>first</em> lover, but perhaps it had been the same – perhaps it had been different. He’d never tried to ask.</p><p>There was no point, Colm didn’t think, in trying to understand it. Understanding Jean-Pierre’s love-life was as pointless as trying to understand anything else about him: Colm loved Jean, and that was what mattered.</p><p>“Colm,” said Asmodeus, and Colm looked up from his work, sitting back on his heels. Asmodeus’ expression was serious, but his eyes, which glinted an uncomfortably bright green in the afternoon sun, were far away. “I need you to drive me to the docks.”</p><p>Colm raised his eyebrows. “You forget the word for please?”</p><p>“We should hurry,” Asmodeus said calmly, already walking away. “I don’t think he knows how to swim.”</p><p>In a moment, Colm on his feet, his tools dropped behind him as he dodged through the house, fishing his car keys out of the bowl and grabbing up his wallet and his phone: when he stumbled out of the front door, Asmodeus was already patiently waiting in the passenger seat, and Colm dropped everything into his lap as he turned the key in the ignition, reversing even as he pulled his door closed and did up his seatbelt, which meant he almost swerved into next door’s already-battered Ford Fiesta, missing it by an inch.</p><p>“Calm down,” Asmodeus instructed him, even-toned as Colm turned onto the main road, taking the bus lane to avoid what traffic there was, fully aware he could charm his way out of any ticket the might get.</p><p>“I’m calm,” Colm said tensely.</p><p>“You’re speeding,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“Well, you’ll stop us from hitting anybody, won’t you?”</p><p>Asmodeus chuckled, a rich sound, and Colm couldn’t help the tap of his fingers on the car’s wheel even as Asmodeus began to give him directions, telling him which street to turn down, which turn-off to take, which lane to follow.</p><p>He was aware of the way his heart was thumping in his chest, of the anxiety thrumming under his skin, but beside him, Asmodeus was smiling slightly, and Colm glanced at him as he turned into a side street that led through a facility of stacked shipping containers.</p><p>“What are you so pleased about?”</p><p>“I’m remembering,” Asmodeus said quietly. “When you Fell I was three miles away – I didn’t have a car. I ran.” He said it softly, his voice warm and affectionate, and Colm remembered the sudden sensation of his stomach – he’d never had a stomach before – dragged out from inside him as he fell, the cold crash of the water on his every side, remembered heaving in a gasp with lungs he’d never used before, and then choking on saltwater.</p><p>Asmodeus had been a beacon, a strong figure that pulled him out from the water and held him over the surface as he swum Colm ashore, and had gently rubbed his back as he’d coughed out the water he’d inhaled. It was strange – at the time, Asmodeus had felt so unerringly like home.</p><p>It was only after he left that Colm realised he had no idea what home felt like, and only when they met again that he was aware of how empty Asmodeus felt.</p><p>Workers in high-vis jackets and hard-hats were walking back and forth around the portside as they unloaded containers from some huge freighter, and Colm leaned forward to peer up at the swinging crane as they pulled up, but Asmodeus didn’t pay it any heed – if he noticed the workers at all, he didn’t show it.</p><p>To his credit, none of them even looked their way.</p><p>Colm shut his door and followed after Asmodeus as he strode over the tarmac and down a corridor between bright yellow, steel containers. It was maze-like, dodging into the little alleys between the stacked crates, which were huge and towered above their heads, leaving them drenched in shadow despite the brightness of the day, but Asmodeus never hesitated or paused, except to make sure Colm was right behind him.</p><p>When they came from the labyrinth, they hopped a set of steel dividers and went to a roadway that went directly parallel to the water, which was a dark grey.</p><p>“Where—”</p><p>The flash hurt, brighter than the sun and somehow burning deeper than his eyes, and Colm hissed in pain, shielding his face with the crook of his elbow. It was a more agonising brightness than had ever hit him from a muzzle flash or explosion, and Asmodeus’ fingers touched against his shoulder, squeezing. It was meant to be comforting, Colm thought – it <em>was</em> comforting.</p><p>He knew without being able to see that Asmodeus wasn’t shielding his own eyes, that he didn’t have to, and after a few moments passed, where even through his squeezed-shut eyes and the flesh and bone of his own elbow, Colm knew there was an impossible conflagration ahead of him, Asmodeus said softly, “You can look.”</p><p>Colm unshielded his eyes just in time to see widespread wings the colour of chipped onyx, shining black with traces of grey, silhouetted against the sky before the figure dropped down and hit the water.</p><p>The angel didn’t even scream. It broke the surface with a resounding splash, and Colm stared as it desperately thrashed around with its arms and wings alike, and he looked expectantly to Asmodeus.</p><p>“You thought I brought you to watch?” Asmodeus asked, looking forward with one eyebrow raised, watching impassively as the angel struggled. “I can drive myself, Colm, but I’m not swimming today. It’s your turn to pay it forward.”</p><p>“As ucht Dé, De,” Colm spat, dropping his keys into Asmodeus’ waiting hand, and ignored Asmodeus’ smile as he dove into the water.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>He carried the new angel to the car. Asmodeus kept hold of his keys, and with the new angel’s sodden wings wrapped around Colm’s body like a shuddering cowl, Colm managed to get them both into back of the car, where Asmodeus had pulled all the seats forward so that there’d actually be space.</p><p>The angel’s wings left greasy stains on the insides of the windows, and Colm hushed him when he let out a sharp, shuddered noise at the sound of the car door slamming shut.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Colm said against his hair, which was black, with a light wave to it. “I’ve got you, I have you.”</p><p>“I was… I don’t remember, I don’t remember,” the angel mumbled, his fingers so tightly fisted in Colm’s shirt that Colm almost thought the fabric might tear under his grip, his face shoved into the juncture of Colm’s neck. “I don’t <em>remember</em>—”</p><p>“You Fell,” Colm said softly, stroking the skin between his wings, feeling the smooth skin under his hands. “You Fell, that’s all, but we have you, you’re not alone.”</p><p>He loosened his grip slightly, adjusting the position of his hands as the angel fidgeted in his lap, and he <em>wailed</em>. “Don’t let me go, don’t—”</p><p>“I won’t, I won’t,” Colm promised him, rocking slightly on his awkwardly crossed legs. “I’ve got you.”</p><p>“Text Jean,” Asmodeus said as he pulled out of the port, and Colm watched his phone, which Asmodeus had connected to the car’s central unit, show the text message screen: he saw this through a huge few tufts of black feather, and kept a tight hold of the angel shivering in his arms. “The new angel has Fallen. Let Padraic know. Please make space for him to dry in the living room. Send text.”</p><p>Colm’s phone vibrated, but the motion made his phone dip into the middle of the seat, out of his sight.</p><p>“What does his reply say?”</p><p>“I couldn’t tell you,” Asmodeus said. “I didn’t bring my glasses.”</p><p>“Should you be driving?”</p><p>“I can see the road,” Asmodeus said. “Though I’m afraid I’m rather estimating our speed.”</p><p>“Christ,” Colm said.</p><p>“I was measuring,” the angel mumbled: he had a low voice with a strange, crooning aspect to it, a funny rhythm on the words. “I had a scales. I didn’t… I didn’t do anything—”</p><p>“No one did anything,” Colm murmured comfortingly. “None of us did anything. That’s not why we Fell.”</p><p>The emotion that radiated from the angel in his arms was impossible. There was a profound grief in him, a desperate confusion, a sense, even, of aching betrayal – this cocktail of emotions was common to every Fallen angel Colm had ever known, in the initial stages, and yet in this angel there was a sense of melancholy, too, a fear of having disappointed.</p><p>Colm squeezed him all the tighter, closed his eyes and gripped him against his chest as Asmodeus drove on.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre spread his thighs a little further apart, adjusting his grip on Aimé’s hair and dragging him closer at a different angle. Aimé laughed, and rewarded this commanding movement with a graze of teeth against Jean-Pierre’s inner thigh, but then returned to work with his tongue.</p><p>To his credit, he had not made a single complaint as to any ache in his jaw, and although he was not extremely skilled in this arena, his enthusiasm afforded a certain delight.</p><p>On his sideboard, his phone vibrated with a notification, and without untangling his occupied hand from Aimé’s hair, he reached for it, turning the screen idly to face him, before he sat up in shock. “Fuck,” he said.</p><p>“If you want,” Aimé said hoarsely, looking up at Jean-Pierre with his chin shining. “You want to be on top?”</p><p>“Oh, you are adorable,” Jean-Pierre murmured, cupping Aimé’s jaw and stroking his thumb over the top of his cheek. “But no, my brothers are coming home, and it’s something quite urgent.”</p><p>“Oh,” Aimé said, sitting up, and before he could get up, Jean-Pierre put his hand on Aimé’s chest.</p><p>“Your reward first,” Jean-Pierre said, hastily texting back with one thumb as his other hand slid down Aimé’s belly.</p><p>“But isn’t it an emergency?” Aimé asked, even as his cheeks burned a dusky red, and he fell onto his back.</p><p>“As if this will take long,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and laughed as Aimé’s delicate flush become a furious one.</p><p>When Colm’s car pulled onto the drive, Jean-Pierre and Aimé had pushed all the chairs and sofas to the very edges of the living room, leaving a great space in the centre of the room where Jean-Pierre had laid out a few soft blankets, and despite the mild warmth of the evening, at Jean-Pierre’s instruction, Aimé had built a fire.</p><p>“Sit,” Jean-Pierre instructed. “He’s going to be very overwhelmed, I expect.”</p><p>“Like a newborn, you said.”</p><p>“Not precisely, but like enough,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and took the kettle, which had boiled, from the hob. He was pouring tea when Colm led the way into the house, the new angel wrapped around him like some sort of great, feathery bat, and Jean-Pierre let out a sympathetic sound at the shuddered sound he emitted as Colm lowered himself to the middle of the floor.</p><p>Gesturing for Asmodeus to take to the tea, he stepped forward and, still naked as he was, let his own wings come free. He heard Aimé’s gasp, glanced at him and saw the desperate wonder in his eyes, but he could show off for him at another time: at the moment, he focused on the new angel, who was still shivering in Colm’s lap, even as Colm took his face gently by the jaw and turned him to look at Jean-Pierre.</p><p>It was a handsome face – square but youthful, his skin a lovely brown colour, with a few beauty spots scattered on his cheeks, and huge, very round brown eyes. He held no familial similarity, but like the Mac Giolla Chríosts, he looked as though he had some South Indian heritage. At least, that was what it would look like to humans – the Embassy tended to sort out some false lineage for angels to let them move in their circles, but every angel was an angel first and foremost.</p><p>His lips – which were very thin, and naturally curved upward, giving him a permanent crescent smile – parted as he looked up at Jean-Pierre, at the golden colour of Jean-Pierre’s own feathers, the curve of his wings around his shoulders.</p><p>The new angel’s wings, which were a richly black colour with a few grey highlights, dark and shining as an oil spill, looked to be in rather good condition. A few of the feathers were bent oddly, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage to them – the oil secreted from the wings’ glands did enough to insulate them from even a soaking of water, and so not too much excess dripped from the new angel’s wings, although his hair was still damp.</p><p>“We’re the same, you and I,” Jean-Pierre said softly, extending his hand. “Won’t you stand for me?”</p><p>For a moment, he clung all the tighter to Colm, pressing his pointed chin so hard against Colm’s shoulder Jean-Pierre wouldn’t be surprised if he left an imprint, but then he began to awkwardly extricate himself. Jean-Pierre recognised in him the strange clumsiness he had often seen in new angels, unused to the constraint of six limbs, but he got to his feet, and put his hands out to take Jean-Pierre’s own.</p><p>Jean-Pierre loosely entangled their fingers, and smiled at the other angel. He was tall – as tall, at least, as Asmodeus, but incredibly gangling, giving the impression of a stripling tree.</p><p>“My name is Jean-Pierre,” he said softly. “Colm was holding you – our brother, here, is Asmodeus. Do you know what you are?”</p><p>“An angel,” he whispered.</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said. “And do you know what has happened?”</p><p>“I… Fell.”</p><p>“Yes. Are you in pain?”</p><p>“Pain,” the angel repeated softly. His head tilted to the side. “I don’t… I don’t know.” The plaintive note in his voice made Jean-Pierre’s heart pang. “I feel…” The angel’s gaze searched the space between them, desperate to find the words that could explain its emotion, unaccustomed to needing words at all, unaccustomed to making use of a voice, when for all time before, someone’s Voice had sufficed.  Jean-Pierre knew the word he was searching for, but did not offer it, even as Colm stepped close again, leaning against the new angel’s back, between his wings, making him relax. “Alone,” he said softly.</p><p>“You’re not alone,” Jean-Pierre promised him.</p><p>“We have you,” Colm agreed.</p><p>“But… But I was… I am… <em>I</em>. <em>Me</em>. <em>Alone</em>.”</p><p>“I know,” Jean-Pierre said softly, squeezing his hand. “But there is also us. We. Together.”</p><p>He saw the grief in the angel’s face, grief so impossible it no doubt felt stifling, and he met Colm’s solemn gaze over the angel’s head: together, they sank back down to the blankets, and behind him, Jean-Pierre was aware of Asmodeus slicing fruit and putting it on a plate. He was silent: he was letting them speak with the new angel, first.</p><p>He always preferred that, Jean-Pierre knew, that he come after other angels, if other angels were present.</p><p>He’d never understood why.</p><p>“You can pick a name, if you want,” Jean-Pierre said softly. The angel was sandwiched between Jean-Pierre and Colm, warm between them: like Jean’s, his heart beat somewhat faster than the other men in the room, and his wings rubbed against Jean-Pierre’s own, the two of them folded together, feathers brushing feathers.</p><p>“I never had a name before.”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre agreed. “I didn’t, before I fell. Nor did Colm.”</p><p>“What about him?” the angel asked, and he looked past Jean-Pierre’s head, to Asmodeus.</p><p>“You should eat,” Asmodeus rumbled. “You Fell a long way.”</p><p>The angel obeyed. It didn’t seem like it occurred to him to do otherwise.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Aimé had gotten a change of clothes at home before cycling back to the angels’. He’d picked up cigarettes in the process, and now he sat outside on their little patio, a cigarette between his fingers, his travel ashtray set on the table, in lieu of an actual one.</p><p>Inside, Colm and Jean-Pierre were sitting with the new angel, and were going through a book of baby names for him to choose from.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had encouraged him to help, had asked him to look at a surname generator to pick from, but it had felt like a strange intrusion, watching the two brothers hold the angel between them, and he’d made an excuse to get outside.</p><p>He liked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>He liked him more than he would have expected to – he’d spent three nights with the angels, now, and when they weren’t having sex or watching television, Jean-Pierre talked very freely about absolutely everything. A lot of what he talked was bollocks – he seemed to be under the terrible misimpression that people were fundamentally good, that life was worth living, and that the Earth was quite a wonderful place – but he dominated the conversation with his voice, spoke at length, whether Aimé appeared to be listening or not, and there was something intoxicating in it.</p><p>They had not yet discussed, Aimé was keenly aware, anything of importance.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had avoided all talk of philosophy and most talk of history, even of his own: he had spoken about animals and plants, especially about birds; he had ranked varieties of paints based on how pleasant their texture was on the skin; he had sleepily named every bone in Aimé’s body the night previous, and giggled whenever he found one that he didn’t have himself, or feigned superiority when he found a place where Aimé had one bone, and Jean-Pierre had several.</p><p>He was inhuman.</p><p>That much was clear.</p><p>He commanded Aimé very freely, gave him instructions, spoke about him to Colm – or even spoke <em>to</em> him, at times – without actually saying that he felt that he was Aimé’s better, but somehow heavily implying it by virtue of his tone. It made Aimé thrill. It made him feel like his skin was on fire, and perhaps this newfound kink for subtle degradation was why in the past few days that he’d spent as many hours having sex as he had in his lifetime.</p><p>He heard the door to the porch open, and he glanced up at Asmodeus as he stepped out into the sun, closing the door behind him.</p><p>“May I?” he asked, gesturing to the cigarettes on the table, and as Aimé averted his eyes to try to blink away the ache that developed in the back of them, he said, “Yeah, sure.”</p><p>“You should shower before you go back to bed with Jean,” Asmodeus said, and Aimé watched the way he snapped his fingers under the cigarette’s head, making it flare to life with an orange glow. “His lungs aren’t like yours – they’re easily irritated by smoke, even second-hand.”</p><p>“He said last night we have different bones.”</p><p>“That’s right,” Asmodeus murmured, then took a pensive drag of the cigarette, looking out at the garden. He made no move to sit down, and beside him, as tall and broad as he was, awkwardly folded in the metal chair with his knees at his chest, Aimé felt superlatively small. The sensation wasn’t quite as sexy, coming from Asmodeus, instead of Jean, but it wasn’t <em>not</em> sexy. “Winged angels have a few biological differences from their more human counterparts. Typically, as well as the wings, they have light, hollow bones, more muscle on their bodies, a different digestive system.</p><p>“If you look at Jean’s eyes when he leans over you, you can see a sort of shift at the corners of his eyes. It’s a sort of membrane to keep a sudden airflow from liquefying his brains if he dives from a great height while flying. But he has two sets of eyelids, they just normally move together – if you ever see him in flight, you’ll see them move separately. His eyes rotate separately, too – your eyes are synchronised, so that if you look in one direction, they move together, but Jean-Pierre can look two directions at once.”</p><p>Asmodeus spoke quietly, his rich voice a pleasant rumble in Aimé’s ears: although Asmodeus’ expression did not shift at all, retaining a blank look when Aimé glanced at it, his voice sounded very fond, and there was a warmth in his tone.</p><p>Angels were functionally immortal, could heal from things even vampires and other magic-users couldn’t necessarily heal from, but he didn’t like the idea of his cigarette smoke making Jean-Pierre sick, even if it was just the stuff that clung to his clothes.</p><p>He’d been craving them the past few days. Not while they were having sex – it was difficult to crave for anything, when Jean-Pierre’s thighs were wrapped around his face or his hips – but in the quiet moments, when they were watching television, or when Jean-Pierre was reading, or talking about one thing or the other. It wasn’t only cigarettes he’d been craving, in fairness – he’d missed painting, the past few days, and ordinarily he’d spend his quiet moments between painting with a book in his hands, reading.</p><p>It felt rude, somehow, to want to read his book while Jean-Pierre wanted to watch television, so matter than Aimé didn’t really pay attention: it felt difficult, to talk to Jean-Pierre. It was easy, to listen to him.  </p><p>They smoked their cigarettes in silence, and when Asmodeus leaned over to stub out his fag end, he said, “He’ll ask you to quit, if he hasn’t already.”</p><p>“I don’t smoke in the house,” Aimé said.</p><p>“It isn’t about that.”</p><p>“He hasn’t asked you to quit?”</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said. “But I am wiser than you, Aimé: I don’t have sex with him.”</p><p>Aimé was left with this statement hanging on the air, an uncomfortable statement when voiced about one’s brother, and he shook his head as he stubbed out his own – second – cigarette and closed the travel ashtray’s lid, walking into the side corridor beside the house and putting it back into his bike basket.</p><p>When he came inside, he started to wash his hands, and the new angel stumbled on his broad duck feet and came very close, putting his hand on Aimé’s shoulder.</p><p>“Do you have a surname?” he asked beseechingly.</p><p>“Yes,” Aimé said good-naturedly, glancing to Colm, who had his face in his hands, and Jean-Pierre, who was rubbing his temples as though nursing a headache. Several baby name books were scattered haphazardly on the floor between them. Sitting at the table, a set of paperwork spread out before him, Asmodeus sat with his reading glasses on and his chin on his hands. “It’s Deverell.”</p><p>“Oh,” the angel said, wrinkling his nose. When he scrunched it up, the whole of his face scrunched up too, and Aimé smiled at the exaggerated twist of the skin around his eyes, the puckering of his lips. “No, I don’t like that.”</p><p>“George, you haven’t liked a single one we’ve given you,” Colm said, falling back against the armchair. “You won’t even use it most of the time – just <em>pick</em> something.”</p><p>“But I should like it,” said George, crossing his arms over his chest. The wings had disappeared, but he was still completely naked, and the fact that he was standing right next to Aimé didn’t seem to have struck him as a potential problem. “It’s my name, isn’t it?”</p><p>“My mother’s maiden name was Downe, if that helps,” Aimé said. “But I suppose if you took that, your middle name would have to be Fell.”</p><p>“Why?” George asked.</p><p>Aimé opened his mouth, and then closed it, focusing on turning off the taps and drying his hands.</p><p>“I like it,” George declared. “Downe.”</p><p>Aimé heard Colm thank God in Irish, and saw Jean-Pierre look heavenwards, crossing himself as he murmured something he couldn’t hear. He suppressed his laughter, and watched George’s flat, square arse as he happily waddled over to Asmodeus, taking the pen and beginning to fill out his forms.</p><p>“I would kiss you,” Jean-Pierre said as Aimé stepped toward him, “if your mouth would not taste of tar and ash.”</p><p>“I’m gonna go shower,” Aimé said, trying to ignore the shiver that ran down his spine: there was something intent in Jean-Pierre’s gaze as he took Aimé’s hands. Perhaps that was what made it so exciting, that Jean-Pierre disliked the cigarettes, than infuriating.</p><p>“If you first rinse out your mouth, I will join you,” Jean-Pierre murmured. He was so beautiful. It was impossible, looking at him, to reckon with it – even looking at him like this, naked, covered all over with scars, Aimé felt as though he were holding hands with something precious, like he was in the Met and holding hands with one of the sculptures, like Jean-Pierre was priceless.</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Aimé said, giving a mock salute, and Jean-Pierre laughed, reaching out and sliding his hands over Aime’s throat, pressing his thumb to the hollow between his collarbones. It wasn’t a hard touch – it was a strange, cursory movement, like he was doing it just to see what it felt like, and for some reason, it made Aimé’s cheeks burn.</p><p>“Come,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Congratulations on your name, George Downe.”</p><p>George, newly christened, gave them a cheerful wave, and Aimé let Jean-Pierre lead him up the stairs.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Once George was sprawled out on the sofa, sleeping for the first time in his life, underneath several blankets and snoring quietly, Asmodeus stacked together the paperwork to be sent off to the Embassy, in exchange for which they’d receive bits and pieces for George – a birth certificate, some made-up family history, an ID, just enough for the mundane government to accept that he was real, and of course, information for the Irish magical government.</p><p>“You want to see something funny?” Asmodeus asked.</p><p>Colm narrowed his eyes at his brother. “Will I think it’s funny?”</p><p>“I think so.”</p><p>“Okay,” Colm murmured, and Asmodeus chuckled.</p><p>Turning the front page of the papers to face Colm, Colm scanned them.</p><p><strong>SURNAME: </strong>DOWNE</p><p><strong>FIRST NAME(S) AND MIDDLE NAME(S)</strong>; GEORGE FELL</p><p>Colm laughed, putting his head in his hands.</p><p>“Told you you’d think it was funny,” Asmodeus murmured, and slid the documents into the waiting envelope.   </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please remember to comment and let me know what you think of each chapter as you read! I'm always eager to hear people's thoughts. </p><p>If you've not filled out <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cslZiAnGfZDCuG0xVaIWEAaceAflsunnCq4s-GOc5Gs">this survey</a> before, I'd also appreciate your feedback!</p>
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<a name="section0011"><h2>11. A Sanctified Tongue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s courses started a full week before Aimé’s return to the university, and so it was at a little past seven o’clock that he arrived on the doorstep of Aimé’s flat. Its door was secreted between the doors of two far more dilapidated buildings, housing a mix of students and the elderly, but Jean knew from the security system that it had far more money invested in its build.</p><p>He well-knew the value some of the rich put into appearing poor.</p><p>Aimé’s apartment, being as he owned it himself, and being as it was so large a space on the top of a building, a studio with a great deal of outdoor space to work by, was no doubt a keenly-kept secret from his fellows. Jean-Pierre doubted he even paid rent.</p><p>Standing in the sleek, very clean elevator, he leaned casually against one of the glass walls, and ignored the elderly woman in a cream suit that kept glancing at him suspiciously.</p><p>Aimé had given him a key to use, and had had to get it cut himself. Jean-Pierre saw why now, for there was a brand name neatly printed over the key, and he knew off the top of his head what a devil this particular lock was to pick – even when you were manipulating the pins as perfectly as one might, one still had the sidebar to reckon with.</p><p>Sliding the key into the lock, he turned it, stepping inside, and he felt the wash of the enchantments in the house over his skin. A neatly appointed system, to be sure, albeit a little overly traditional – but for what it lacked in innovation, it made up for in strength of character, and as Jean-Pierre flexed his fingers on the air, he could feel how deeply the enchantment was embedded in the walls, the floors, the support beams. No doubt it went all the way to the building’s foundations.</p><p>Sliding the key back into his pocket, he stood in the small corridor that opened out into the huge, square room of Aimé’s studio. His coat and his bag were hung on the coatrack beside the door, which seemed to go mostly unused by Aimé himself, for the only article hung here was a raincoat that did not look like it had been touched in months.</p><p>The room was broadly separated into three segments: a lower half-floor, which housed the kitchen and a social area, and two raised areas. One of these raised areas, directly across from the entrance, closed off, and housed, from what Jean-Pierre could see, Aimé’s bedroom and bathroom; the other, which was open, housed his studio.</p><p>Despite the high ceilings, which contained a variety of skylights, and the twin French doors on each edge opening out onto the balconies, the room was quite dark. Stepping silently forward, Jean-Pierre glanced to the small kitchen, where plates and pans were stacked high in the sink, and where the expensive marble of the countertop was hidden under cardboard packets, plastic bags, and pieces of tinfoil strewn over its surface. The rubbish bin overflowed: the recycling bin was almost empty.</p><p>The rest of the room was not drastically different. Blankets, half-eaten packets of crisps, and cans of beer or bottles of spirits in various states of consumption were stacked over the comfortable couches and armchairs, not to mention the various coffee tables and end tables scattered around the room; through the sliding door that led into Aimé’s bedroom, on a raised platform, Jean-Pierre noted that he could not at all see the carpet through the carpet of dirty clothes, and yet more cans of beer – although in the bedroom’s case, it seemed that almost all of them had been drunk to their completion.</p><p>Jean-Pierre stepped up to the raised platform that housed Aimé’s studio, and folded his hands neatly over his belly, surveying it with interest. Where the rest of his flat was in utter disarray, where fruit flies and other pests would no doubt have overrun the place were it not for the careful appointment of the house’s ward structure, Aimé’s workspace was attended to with both love and discipline – perhaps all that Aimé had in him to spare.</p><p>Against one of the walls, great shelves housed large canvases as their paint dried and cured, dozens upon dozens of them stacked neatly, many of them loosely covered with cloth. Two smaller, standing units housed the canvases that weren’t quite so unwieldy, and a series of cloths were laid out over one section of the floor, several easels holding paintings in states of various completion atop them. Against the other wall, hundreds of paints were carefully and painstakingly organised by shade, stacked in purpose-built shelving that would have made Colm weep for its ease of use.</p><p>The only messy part of Aimé’s studio was his desk, upon which were stacked various essays and drafts and pieces of paperwork: there were paint stains over his keyboard and the plastic of his rolling chair, and Jean-Pierre traced Aimé’s thumb print on his computer mouse, left in some shade of nickel titanate.</p><p>The smell of paint was overwhelming, a thick scent that sat heavy in his lungs, but he would get used to it. The smell of cigarette smoke, on the other hand, was distasteful, and he scanned the room, looking out for the cigarette packets in amongst the rubbish strewn about, the ashtrays in various states of fullness on every available surface.</p><p>Smiling slightly, Jean-Pierre stepped to the slightly open set of the westside French doors, and stepped out beneath the metal canopy there. Here, another easel – this one metal, and pinned to the ground with screws, no doubt so that Aimé could paint outside even in wind, judging by the additional windshields that were set to drag down from each side of the canopy and hook to the ground.</p><p>The painting in progress was lovely, an impressionist study of troops in red uniform, stood to attention, their rifles in hand. Their features were vague, nothing more than streaks of shiny peach-coloured paint, and while the fanciful affects of their uniforms had been painted in keen detail – the brocade on their chests and wrists, their epaulettes, the individual buttons, the shapes of their carabines – they held no marks that identified them as belonging to one nation or other.</p><p>The artist lay asleep on a battered leather couch, evidently used to the touch of the elements, a heavy tome about metaphysics and their impact of free will serving as his blanket. Beside him, on the table, was an empty naggin of vodka, and a heaped ashtray.</p><p>There was red paint smeared on the artist’s cheek, and Jean-Pierre wondered, in an abstract sort of way, how handsome Aimé might look were that blood.</p><p>He was delicate, graceful, about sitting himself for a moment on the edge of the sofa, and when he reached with marble-pale fingers for the stubbled surface of Aimé’s chin, Aimé, fast asleep, did not protest. His jaw opened freely at a slight squeeze on each side, and though the sensation was no-doubt ticklish even to the unconscious brain, he scarcely stirred as Jean-Pierre drew a few symbols on the roof of his mouth, the surface of his tongue, the inside of his lip.</p><p>When the enchantment flared, it lit Aimé’s mouth from the inside making him rather resemble, for a moment, a Halloween pumpkin carving, and it made Jean-Pierre smile as he rose to his feet.</p><p>After picking his steps through the chaos of Aimé’s bedroom to collect a blanket that smelled generally clean – although, like everything in his vicinity, it had marks of oil paint on it – and setting his boots aside, he padded back outside. Delicately removing the weight of freedom from Aimé’s chest, he replaced the book with his own weight, and threw the blanket over them both.</p><p>In his sleep, Aimé grunted, tangling his hand in Jean-Pierre’s hair, but he didn’t wake, and Jean-Pierre put his ear against his chest, closing his own eyes. He slept very easily with Aimé as his pillow.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>The first thing Aimé was aware of was that he was warm.</p><p>He hadn’t been all that warm when he’d first sat outside – the rain had cooled the air quite a bit, although once he’d drank a little, he’d barely even noticed. Now, he’d slept most of the alcohol off, and was fully aware of the heat radiating from the blanket pulled over his chest – or, more specifically, the angel between him and the blanket.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was sleeping soundly, his beautiful lips parted, his eyelashes seeming longer than usual because of the way he’d closed his eyes, and Aimé was aware that he had his fingers curled in Jean-Pierre’s hair – his other hand was curled around his lower back.</p><p>Working that hand free, he worked his phone out from his pocket and glanced at the time – eight-thirty.</p><p>“Jean-Pierre,” Aimé mumbled, and Jean-Pierre shifted where he was curled against his chest, raising his head and looking at Aimé sleepily. He looked impossibly beautiful, and not for the first time, Aimé felt as though he were going against some sort of commandment, being able to touch something as perfect as he was, as holy as he was.</p><p>He’d never much cared for the sanctity of the holy before.</p><p>“I was gonna clean up,” he said lamely.</p><p>He’d wanted to. He had. Jean-Pierre was impossible, beautiful, was all but blessing Aimé with his presence, and even if he hadn’t been, Aimé did hate how disgusting his flat was, how quickly it got that way, almost without him noticing, without his permission. He’d wake up sober in the mornings, survey the state of the place, the rubbish, the mess, and still sick to his stomach, he’d just… drink.</p><p>It was easier than cleaning up, most of the time.</p><p>He never knew where to start.</p><p>“Oh,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and almost automatically, when he sat up in Aimé’s lap, the blanket falling down around his waist, Aimé put his hands on Jean-Pierre’s hips. Aimé stared up at him, speechless, as Jean-Pierre yawned, stretching out his arms and rolling his shoulders, and then sleepily rubbed at one eye.</p><p>“How was class?”</p><p>“It was alright,” Jean-Pierre said. “We did an in-class test as part of our anatomy module, just to ascertain our base level of knowledge. A few of my professors knew me already – I was an EMT in Texas, for some time, before coming here.”</p><p>“Isn’t that the ambulance people that don’t do serious injuries?”</p><p>“An EMT only does a limited amount of training,” Jean-Pierre said. “A paramedic must pursue some twelve hundred hours of tutelage <em>at least</em>, if not close to two thousand. I did not want to pursue a medical degree in the US, when my past identity with the mundane system ran to an end. I knew we would be moving again soon.”</p><p>Aimé was quiet for a moment.</p><p>He’d thought about immortality before, of course. For mundies studying philosophy, immortality was little more than a theoretical concept. Sure, one could think about the immortality of the soul, if the soul existed, what happened to it, what changes it might undergo, but actual, real immortality was something that only existed in the realms of theoretical debate, or when discussing the potential existence of the Creator God – although really, these two were basically the same.</p><p>But, when you <em>weren’t</em> mundane? When you looked at these things from a magical perspective?</p><p>Immortality existed.</p><p>There were divinities, gods, that existed in perpetuity because their mere existence was basically predilected on belief, and so long as people believed in them, they continued to live; plenty of fae were functionally immortal, from a human perspective; angels were functionally immortal; vampires were functionally immortal.</p><p>Spirits were <em>actually</em> immortal, in that they were eternal, although Aimé had had a few debates, with one person and another, as to whether spirits strictly counted as alive.</p><p>When people thought about immortality from a mundane perspective, the questions were a lot more lofty: they talked about the ethics of choosing to be immortal at the expense of others; they talked about what made life worth living, what made ambition worth having, if one was immortal; they talked about the degradation of ideals, or whatever else.</p><p>Actual immortals – those that interacted with mundie life, anyway – had to have rolling identities every fifty years or so, and had to fill out an additional tax form, and there were whole departments in hospitals and governments devoted to immortal concerns.</p><p>It sort of took the philosophical excitement out of it.</p><p>Jean-Pierre shifted slightly in Aimé’s lap, and Aimé felt his eyelids flutter as Jean-Pierre rolled his hips down against Aimé’s own. Through Aimé’s joggers, he could easily fell the muscle of Jean-Pierre’s thighs as he squeezed tightly around Aimé’s own, and he hissed out a low noise as he watched Jean-Pierre’s hand slid under the waistband of his tight jeans, his expression turn to <em>bliss</em>, the column of his neck stretch out as he tipped his head back.</p><p>“Fuck,” Aimé whispered.</p><p>“You read my mind,” said Jean-Pierre, and began to struggle out of his oversized jumper.</p><p>He’d never been with a trans man before – if that was even what Jean-Pierre was, because he had a completely flat chest and no surgery scars, and he’d never made any mention of it. It seemed rude to ask, somehow.</p><p>What he knew for certain was that Jean-Pierre’s cunt was as perfect as the rest of him, and it said a lot for its appeal that he got hard watching Jean-Pierre – perfect, holy, <em>beautiful</em> Jean-Pierre – wrestle himself out of his stupidly tight jeans, with no grace at all.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>They went out for dinner.</p><p>Colm, for Jean-Pierre’s sake, had already made a list of every café and restaurant in the city that offered significant raw fruit and vegetables on their menu; Bedelia had passed on some unexpected recommendations of restaurants willing to make exceptions or substitutions for the peculiarities of his diet, as her father favoured them; Asmodeus had supplied a handful of establishments that were magical in their nature, and catered to less mundane diets.</p><p>With Jean-Pierre’s tablet in his hands, the map app open so that he could see the various markers all over the map of Dublin, Aimé had stared down at it with fascination, and then looked at Jean-Pierre with dry amusement on his face.</p><p>“What?” Jean-Pierre had asked.</p><p>“You’re just— a fucking princess, that’s all,” Aimé said.</p><p>“I resent that,” Jean-Pierre had replied, and immediately, Aimé had crumpled, his lips parting.</p><p>“Oh, I didn’t— I didn’t mean it like <em>that</em>.”</p><p>“Good,” Jean-Pierre said. “The monarchy are a plague.”</p><p>Aimé had stared at him, baffled, and then pointed at a point on the map. “This place is good,” he said. “They have a fireplace, you’ll like that.”</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>,” Jean-Pierre had agreed, and had slipped behind Aimé on the back of his bike, watched him shiver as Jean-Pierre breathed on the back of his neck, and Aimé tried to keep his balance.</p><p>The restaurant was called Whitman’s, and was fae-run. Flowers and verdant leaves grew in thick, heavy thatches on the walls, and plump fruits hung down from trellises, and to one edge of the room, like Aimé had said, there was a great fireplace, which was lit and crackled with hot flame.</p><p>The table directly across from it was empty, and Jean-Pierre settled immediately into one of the seats, cross-legged, and glanced around the room. It was a beautiful restaurant, and cut off entirely from mundane view: he’d felt the shift of magic around them as they’d stepped slightly to the left of what was often thought of as the <em>human</em> dimension, and the strength of the enchantment in the room was a warm, heavy weight on his chest.</p><p>Unbuttoning his overshirt and setting it aside, he felt for the vents in the back of his undershirt, and as he let free his wings, he watched Aimé’s face. As there had been the first time he’d seen them, there was awe painted across Aimé’s face, and Jean-Pierre’s hairs stood on end on the back of his neck, a pleasured blush passing over his cheeks, his chest. He liked very much to be looked at – he especially enjoyed to be looked at like <em>that</em>.</p><p>Aimé looked at Jean-Pierre’s wings with his eyes wide and softly lit, their different colours strangely illuminated by the fireside beside them, and his crooked lips were parted as his fingers roved over the golden curve of Jean-Pierre’s plumage, curled as his wings were on each side of his shoulder like a cowl. Aimé looked at him greedily, as though he was desperate to look his fill, as though he were hungry for more.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was content to be a meal for the eyes, when Aimé’s hands touched him so worshipfully.</p><p>“You really want to show off that badly?” Aimé asked, his tone wry. He had a voice well-made for wryness: his voice was husky, had a strange, crooning note to it that made Aimé sound somewhat older than he was, and distracted from the natural grate of his D4 accent. “What, people don’t look at you enough already, with how pretty you are? You need the wings out too?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned forward, putting his chin on the heels of his palms, and he looked focusedly at Aimé, smiling as sweetly as he dared. “Tell me I’m pretty again,” he said softly.</p><p>Aimé laughed even as he wrinkled his nose and shook his head.</p><p>“If they see my wings,” Jean-Pierre said softly, “it means they will take my dietary requirements more seriously. A winged angel’s dietary peculiarities are ordinarily well known to the culinary profession, but there is never any harm in a visual aid.”</p><p>“And you like it when people look at you.” There was, of course, a note of disapproval in the other man’s tone, a mild condescension, but Jean-Pierre wasn’t troubled by it. Reaching across the table, he slid his hand into Aimé’s, interlinking their fingers.</p><p>“I do,” Jean-Pierre confirmed, and squeezed Aimé’s hand. “You dislike it? All these people look at me and think how beautiful I am – would you begrudge them what you think yourself?”</p><p>Aimé’s cheeks darkened, and he looked away.</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled.</p><p>“Good evening,” said their waitress, a handsome girl with dark curls that were more blue than black. She was plump, with an hourglass figure, her skin a vibrant orange, like the colour of stained glass – she wore no name tag, of course. Fae culture would bend somewhat to human mores in these times of integration, but there were limits. “Your menus – can I fetch you two any drinks?”</p><p>Aimé’s gaze had turned away from Jean-Pierre’s wings to the girl, had dropped to the curve of her backside, and Jean-Pierre reached across the table, grasping Aimé by the jaw and forcing him to look back at Jean-Pierre. He let out a breathless sound, his lips parting, eyes widening, as he met Jean-Pierre’s gaze. His cheeks burned hot under Jean-Pierre’s thumb and fingers, with shame or arousal, Jean-Pierre really couldn’t say, but he looked cowed, which was sufficient apology for his liking.</p><p>“I won’t drink wine,” he said softly. “But if you would be willing to supplement whatever alcohol you order, I should like to share a bottle of cordial. It’s sweet, but not syrupy. Will you?”</p><p>His grip was not very tight on Aimé’s jaw, but it was tight enough that Aimé hesitated slightly before he parted his lips to answer. “Yeah,” he said. “Fine. You pick the flavour.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre stroked Aimé’s chin with his thumb, a silent reward, and he leaned back into his own bench. The fae girl showed no offence at his act of possession, but Aimé seemed slightly dazed, reaching up and touching his own cheek where Jean-Pierre had gripped it.</p><p>Satisfaction pooled low in Jean-Pierre’s belly.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“What happens to you if you eat bread?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre laughed. He sucked the strawberry juice from his fingers, and demonstratively, reached over the table and tore off a small piece of the mie of Aimé’s bread roll, putting it into his mouth whilst keeping Aimé’s gaze, and chewing.</p><p>“Mmm,” he hummed thoughtfully, swallowing. “As you can see, I won’t explode.”</p><p>“I didn’t think you would.”</p><p>“It just makes me feel tired afterward – lethargic. Most grains do, really – a little here and there can be nice, and I like very much the breads that are very thick with grains and seeds. Asmodeus has this wonderful recipe from a friend of his in England, with a great many seeds and whole grains in it, that when you cut a slice of it, one thinks one is looking into bedrock. White bread won’t kill me, but a full portion of it would make me somewhat unwell.” Jean-Pierre looked thoughtful as he took up what Aimé now knew was called a dragonfruit, a bright pink and green fruit with a speckled white centre. “Fish is alright, especially very oily fish – tougher sea food, like octopus, is a little bit harder on me. Heavy meat, especially very rich meats, like beef or lamb, or duck, make me sick; very fatty meats, like pork, make me sick; milk and all of its products, such as yoghurt and cheese, makes me sick. I could eat meat stews – I used to, when I first Fell. But I do not like to eat meat.”</p><p>“It bother you that I do?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre considered the question, his head tilting to the side as he licked a strip of dragonfruit from the side of his hand. He usually ate with his hands – Aimé didn’t think he’d seen Jean-Pierre use a fork yet, these past few weeks. He looked very thoughtful, his brows furrowed, as he said, “My family didn’t eat much meat when I Fell. We couldn’t afford it. We lived very modestly – it was a different time. I would rather people ate meat than starve.”</p><p>“You think if people went vegetarian, people would <em>starve</em>?” Aimé asked, unable to restrain the scoff of condescension in his voice, and Jean-Pierre looked at him, fascinated.</p><p>“Meat is cheap,” Jean-Pierre said, shrugging his shoulders. “People are poor.”</p><p>“What, like <em>you’re</em> poor?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Not anymore,” Jean-Pierre said. “But only because I come from a strong community. The Celestial Embassy has paid for every piece of schooling and training I have ever taken – were it not for the fact that Asmodeus always purchases the properties we live in, the Embassy would give us a stipend for rent, or assist us with mortgages, if we struggled with them. As it happens, Colm and I each make a moderate income, and return a lot of our excess to the Embassy, that it might help others.”</p><p>Angels were—</p><p>Weird.</p><p>He knew that they had something like diplomatic immunity, that angels had their own courts of justice internationally, in large part because a lot of places felt uncomfortable putting ostensibly holy beings on trial, and he knew that they had tight-knit communities.</p><p>He knew they didn’t pay income tax in the same way most magical people did, because his dad had mentioned it once or twice before, but…</p><p>“How much do you have to give them? The Embassy?”</p><p>“We don’t have to give them anything,” Jean-Pierre said. “If we told them we could not pay our dues, no bailiffs would come for us. On the income I shall be earning as I pursue my degree, I shall probably pay thirty percent – once I am returned to work, fifty or sixty.”</p><p>“Sixty percent,” Aimé said. “You’ll get taxed a sixty percent rate?”</p><p>It was <em>insane</em>. He’d heard liberals talk about high tax rates, but even then, the rate wasn’t normally <em>sixty percent</em> – that was obscenely high, and yet, at Aimé’s expression of revulsion, Jean-Pierre laughed.</p><p>“It is not a tax,” he said softly. “We pay no rent, our electricity is mostly provided by Colm’s solar panels, our home is well-insulated and our use of fuel is efficient. Colm grows a lot of what we eat, and trades for much of the rest of it, doing odd jobs, bartering here and there… We do not need a lot of money to live on.”</p><p>“You’re crazy. It’s one thing to pay your loan back for school, but then… You just <em>give</em> them all your money? What does it go to?”</p><p>“Some of it will help run the Celestial Museum in Harare, to administrative costs. Some of it is given as a stipend to those of us who cannot work, or wish to pursue unpaid labour, such as charity work, or art – or there are those who are in school themselves. The point of the Embassy is to provide for us all: we were a collective, once. That we are now of many bodies does not mean our wealth should not be of one.”</p><p>“You make angels sound like ants. Doesn’t that— You’ve spent, what, three hundred years studying medicine and healing the sick, right?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“And you just… Don’t you want a <em>reward</em> for that? Don’t you think you’ve earned your pay?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre was smiling, his head tilted slightly to the side, as he chewed on a grape, and swallowed.</p><p>“What are you smiling at?”</p><p>“This is the first real conversation we have had in our time together,” Jean-Pierre said musingly. “I think it is revealing a lot about us, in each direction: I hope you will not tire of me.”</p><p>“I think you’re crazy,” Aimé said, shaking his head. He couldn’t even feel frustrated, it was such a bonkers, backwards way of thinking about anything. “You’re gonna do your medical degree, work insane hours as a doctor, and then… What? You’ll be happy sending most of your money back to the angels, so that they can hand it out to some burnout who’ll just spend it on beer and do shit paintings?”</p><p>“Why not?” Jean-Pierre asked, with a delicate shrug, his wings moving in line with his shoulders. “Isn’t that what your father does?”</p><p>Aimé stared at him, stunned, unable to speak. He felt like the pit had fallen out of his stomach, his head spinning, and the whole time, Jean-Pierre just looked at him, smiling beatifically. Aimé couldn’t even start to think of a comeback. Finally, he managed, weakly, “You’re lucky you’re that fucking pretty.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled as if Aimé had complimented him, a pretty flush burning in his cheeks. “Yes,” he said mildly. “I know.”</p><p>Aimé shook his head, wiping his hands on a napkin, and he stood to his feet. “I’ll be right back, I’m just gonna go take a quick smoke.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre took him by the wrist as he stood to pass by, his thumb stroking delicately over Aimé’s pulse point, and he looked up at Aimé with the most painfully concentrated expression on his face, his beautiful eyes heavily lidded, his lips parted: the expression looked credulous, somehow, ridiculously naïve. If a halo had appeared behind his head, Aimé wouldn’t have been surprised.</p><p>“Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said softly.</p><p>“Yeah?” Aimé asked. The attention was too much: he felt like he might burst into flames under it, somehow.</p><p>“I was only being facetious,” he said. “I think your paintings are very good.”</p><p>Aimé’s mouth was dry, and his cheeks felt like they really would set on fire now, they were burning so much. He nodded hurriedly, so that Jean-Pierre would let go of him, and he stepped outside into the little smoking area. Half the people out here were blue: most of the smoke was green. Aimé almost felt boring as he lit his normal cigarette and leaned back against a pillar, putting it to his lips.</p><p>He wasn’t sure what happened.</p><p>As he took his first inhale, it was like his stomach suddenly roiled and rebelled against him, and he was lucky there was a bin right beside him, or his vomit would have spattered on the floor.</p><p>The cigarette was forgotten.</p><p>Jean-Pierre called his brother to drive them home.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Conditioned Response</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Between Colm and Asmodeus, they’d gotten George a room in a boarding house in the Mórrigan’s Arcade.</p><p>“There are pocket dimensions,” Colm had explained as he’d led George down one of the alley entrances, “which is basically… You have a place with closed off borders – like a closet, or a building – and you magically widen the space within those borders. It’s a kind of magical expansion. But this is different – Mórrigan’s doesn’t have distinct borders: it just exists in a dimension slightly to the side of this one. It only <em>seems</em> like it has borders from the mundane side, because that’s where the entrances are. Understand?”</p><p>“No,” George had said beatifically, but it didn’t seem to bother him, so Colm let the matter drop.</p><p>The room was nice enough, a space broad and high-ceilinged enough that George could sit at his desk, could lie in his bed, could exercise a little, with his wings out. There were no angels staying there, but the head of the kitchen, a Peruvian woman named Dayana, was, and Colm knew, at least, that she’d take the dietary stuff seriously.</p><p>They’d signed him up for cooking classes, and in the meantime, different angels would teach him one thing or another as he settled into his new skin – that was how they did things, how they’d always done things.</p><p>Different angels reacted to the Fall in different ways. Most were out of it for the first few days, and then many of them were sad, or bitter, confused; some were more cheerful, in a sort of optimistic way; some of them – Colm had been like this – just wanted to work, to put themselves to labour, to make themselves feel like they were doing something.</p><p>George—</p><p>George was cheerful, that much was true.</p><p>He was duck-footed with flat soles, and he stumbled over often, clumsy on his feet when he had his wings put away – when they were out, he moved them instinctively to help him keep his balance, and seemed to do far better. Even when they were folded away and he was all but falling over himself, however, he usually had a smile on his face, and although his face fell cartoonishly at the understanding he’d made a mistake, after apologising profusely, he was always smiling again quickly enough.</p><p>Colm hadn’t yet gotten a handle on whether he was optimistic or simple.</p><p>It didn’t matter either way, not really – he was still one of them, and Colm would still love him as a brother regardless – but it always felt like such a puzzle, when he struggled to understand someone from the get-go.</p><p>George wasn’t quite as clumsy with his hands as he was on his feet, but he dropped stuff often, and it seemed to Colm he had a slight trouble maintaining a grip on anything, or doing any particularly complex motions with his hands. It was possible, Colm supposed, that it was a clumsiness he’d grow out of after a few weeks settled in his body, but it seemed too extreme for that. When Colm had asked him, George had told him it didn’t hurt, and when Colm had held George’s hands and pressed on the different parts of his palm, on the knuckles, one-by-one, George had felt no pain, and admitted to none.</p><p>He’d teach him to whittle at some point, if he was interested, but for the time being, Colm didn’t want to put a knife between his fingers. Instead, they had a jigsaw between them, and although George was a little slow at picking up each piece, like he had a hard trouble convincing his hands which once he wanted to pick up, he was smiling as they worked together, humming something out-of-tune and disconnected from any real melody.</p><p>He’d like music, Colm thought – they’d have to bring him along to a session.</p><p>So far, they’d mostly talked about his room at the boarding house: he liked the room, and he liked Colm’s garden, and when they walked through Dublin – slow, so that George didn’t stumble too much – he always looked with fascination up at the buildings, asked questions about how they were built, how the bricks were layered and stuck together, how you went around building something.</p><p>They’d talked about that a lot, the past week – how things were built.</p><p>He’d asked it about the jigsaw too, and Colm had shown how the cardboard was layered, explained how the pictures were printed in a glossy layer on top, described what a printer looked like, how they worked, and then explained how pressure was used to cut the jigsaw pattern in, to separate the pieces. George listened very keenly, and Colm could feel the emotion that radiated from him: curiosity, interest, satisfaction at the thought of a mechanism working as it should. Contentment at the warmth of the room, the feel of the carpet underneath his knees; affection for Colm and his company.</p><p>“I don’t know anything,” George said, apropos of nothing. They’d been sat in silence for half an hour or so, and Colm glanced up at him. There was no anxiety in him about it, no uncertainty, and it was posed as a statement, not a question.</p><p>“Well,” Colm, tilting his head slightly to the side as he considered it. “You’re only a week Fallen. None of us is expecting you to know everything.”</p><p>“But I don’t know <em>anything</em>,” George said. “Won’t people find it so odd?”</p><p>George hadn’t talked to many people just yet. He had been spending a lot of the week with Colm, sitting with him as he worked in the garden (he had spend much of the week deciding which way was most comfortable of sitting on the floor, and making very little progress), helping him carry crates of vegetables or food donations into one place or other (he always held the whole box from the bottom, cradling it in the crooks of each elbow, so it was harder to drop), and otherwise spending time in Colm’s company.</p><p>“I suppose,” Colm said. “But you’ll learn quickly.”</p><p>“There’s an awful lot to learn,” George said softly. There was something there: a slight catch of uncertainty, of anxiety. Colm couldn’t quite get the thread of it, couldn’t quite find where the feeling was rooted and tug.</p><p>Colm turned as the bottom stair creaked slightly behind him, and Asmodeus stepped into the living room. He had a leather clipboard in his hand, closed so that they couldn’t see what was in it.</p><p>“What’s that?” George asked, looking up at Asmodeus, and Asmodeus turned to look at him, his lips shifting into a small smile. The smile was cold, like Asmodeus’ smiles always were, but George didn’t seem put-off by it – he didn’t seem to be intimidated at all by Asmodeus, didn’t seem to find him frightening or weird.</p><p>“It’s a clipboard,” Asmodeus said lowly. “When you place paper between it, you have a hard surface to write on, and an easy way to transport the pages without them becoming creased or bent.”</p><p>“Why? Does creasing the pages make the letters harder to read?”</p><p>“Not ordinarily,” said Asmodeus. “But there is an aesthetic concern – a letter to a friend has as few deliberate creases as possible, and ideally, none which are accidental.”</p><p>“Who are you writing to?”</p><p>“A friend.”</p><p>“An angel?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Oh.” George furrowed his brow, and although confusion came off him, confusion and a sense of aimlessness, not knowing what to say next, there was no trepidation whatsoever, no trace of nerves, despite the fact that in the course of their conversation, Asmodeus’ expression had been utterly frozen in that icy smile of his, even though Asmodeus spoke so tonelessly, even though Asmodeus radiated no feeling at all for George to navigate by. “Is he human?”</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said. “He’s fae.”</p><p>“What’s the difference?”</p><p>“Exposure to magic, primarily,” Asmodeus said, “or a different stream of magic, at least. The fae dimensions flow with a heavier magic – in the mundane world, there is water from a deep spring; in the magical world, flows water from the mountains. The taste is different, but the appearance is the same. In the fae worlds flows wine.”</p><p>“Isn’t everyone drunk all the time?”</p><p>“A metaphor, George.”</p><p>“Oh,” George said unhappily. “I’m not very good with those.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” Asmodeus assured him, and he reached out, curled his fingers in George’s hair for a moment. Colm saw George’s lips curve into a small smile, his wide eyes widening further, felt the warm burst of affection. “Tea, Colm, George?”</p><p>“Alright,” George said.</p><p>“Thanks,” Colm murmured, and before Asmodeus pulled away, he touched Colm, too, cupped his cheek for a moment and looked at him seriously, concentratedly. There was no feeling in it that Colm could skim, but the look in Asmodeus’ eyes seemed focused, and as sincere as Asmodeus could get. Colm touched the back of his hand, and Asmodeus nodded before he pulled away.</p><p>“I’m meeting Padraic tomorrow,” George said. “He said that he was sorry he had not been able to meet with me before. Because he was working.”</p><p>“He works in a school,” Colm said. “Works with children with special needs.”</p><p>“What’s a special need?”</p><p>“Another euphemism, George. A child with <em>special needs</em> is deemed as a child who causes some manner of “disruption” to a classroom,” Asmodeus supplied from the kitchen, placing the lid on the teapot. “Special needs children are considered inconvenient to have in mainstream classes, either because they are slower or faster than their classmates, or require different tools with which to pursue the tasks set them: they are thus often separated from the primary part and put aside. Padraic works with them, to understand their needs from their perspective, as opposed to what which is dictated by an uncaring educational system.”</p><p>Colm stared at Asmodeus’ back for a second or two, feeling his eyebrows raise. When George looked at him askance, he shrugged, “Uh, I don’t… I don’t know, George. I don’t know much about it. He’s a kind man – quiet.”</p><p>“I said I liked texting,” George said quietly. “He said that he did too.”</p><p>George looked to Asmodeus, who was leaning against one of the kitchen counters, writing smoothly on the page pinned to his clipboard with his fountain pen in his hand. It was very old, at least a hundred and fifty years older than any other pen in the house, but whenever he refilled the ink in it, he never spilled a drop, and there were enchantments carved in the tiniest symbols on the nib, so that it blotted and dried the ink as he went.</p><p>“I don’t know how you hold it like that,” he said, his expression, his mood, his tone all wondering.</p><p>Asmodeus looked up at him, and taking up a sheet of notepaper from one of the spare pads by the fruit bowl, he shifted the grip on the pen to mimic how George did it: his three middle fingers curled around the centre of the pen’s shaft, his thumb braced against its top, the tip of his pinky touching almost against the blade of the pen’s nib. It looked uncomfortable, to say the least, and Colm guessed that the fountain pen would barely write like that, that it would only be successful in cutting through the paper, because it needed to be held at a tilted angle.</p><p>Asmodeus looked at George, and George nodded his head, his lips pressed together.</p><p>“Yes,” George said. “It’s easier like that, to hold it steady.”</p><p>Asmodeus gave a neat inclination of his head, and once he’d picked up his teapot, he stepped into the stairwell and went back upstairs.</p><p>Colm glanced down at George’s hands again, at the way he held them as he picked through the pile for the next piece. He was thinking that he would ask Jean to have a look at George’s hands when Jean called him.</p><p>“Hi, Jean,” Colm said. “You alright?”</p><p>“Aimé is very ill,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “We are at the restaurant, Whitman’s – I was wondering if you could bring us home? I can call a taxi if you are busy, I don’t know—”</p><p>“I’m not busy,” Colm said, standing slowly to his feet and gesturing for George to get up with him. “He eat something funny?”</p><p>“Oh, no,” Jean said serenely. “He smoked.”</p><p>Benoit had never smoked in all his life, and Farhad had occasionally smoked a qalyān, but never a cigarette, and he’d stopped, when he and Jean-Pierre had gotten involved, but Bui had smoked, and so had Manolis. Bui had caught on quickly, had smoked two or three times and decided he’d developed an allergy – but Colm remembered Manolis, remembered when he’d figured out what Jean had done.</p><p>He’d never seen a man so angry as he was when that particular penny dropped. Jean-Pierre had laughed when Manolis had grabbed him around the throat and pinned him down, let him think he had the run of things for a second or two before he turned the tables, had Manolis spread out beneath him with Jean-Pierre’s arm crushing his windpipe and the knife in his pocket pressed at an angle on the soft flesh between two of Manolis’ ribs, primed to puncture the lung if he pierced the skin.</p><p>“You do not want your lungs?” he’d asked, had smiled sweetly as he asked the question, looked lovingly into Manolis’ eyes. “You would rather go without?”</p><p>Colm understood torture. He even enjoyed it, after a fashion – he was good at interrogation, always had been, and he’d had countless enemy soldiers tied and bound in front of him, had made them scream, choke, sob for their mothers, and give him everything he ever needed to know.</p><p>But that was so different to what Jean did.</p><p>What sort of fucking person tortured the people they said they loved?</p><p>He’d left the room, hadn’t been able to sit there and watch them, and the next time he’d seen Manolis and Jean-Pierre together the next morning, Jean-Pierre had been back in his lap with Manolis laughing into his breast, the only sign anything had been awry the handprints around Jean’s neck.</p><p>“I’ll pick you up,” Colm said, and hung up the phone. “George, no, you— you stay here.</p><p>“Oh,” George said, and he looked at Colm with concern, his mouth twisting. “You are… angry.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm said. “Gimme, uh, gimme half an hour and I’ll be back, okay?”</p><p>“Alright,” George said, and sat down again.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>He made certain that Aimé was quite finished vomiting before he allowed him into the back of Colm’s car. This, really, was a fairly mild case – now that the enchantment had a practical example to go by, the next occasion would be rather more brutal, and Jean-Pierre rather hoped Aimé understood before he attempted to smoke a third or fourth time.</p><p>He did look quite good, like this – Jean-Pierre was reminded of when Bui had been ill with tuberculosis, and his skin had become this glowing, pale imitation of the warm brown it had been before, and his lips had seemed very pink indeed; the lost weight had made his eyes seem all the wider, and they always sparkled in the light. He had lived four years with the consumption before it had killed him, and that had been after some twenty-five years together.</p><p>He still had far more time with Aimé.</p><p>His brow was somewhat feverish, and Jean-Pierre turned toward him where he sat in the car, gently stroking his hair back from his head, having cooled his hand for the purpose, and Aimé looked at him dolefully, looking quite miserable.</p><p>“Poor thing,” Jean-Pierre said softly, his tone very sympathetic, and he ignored the quiet, disbelieving huff of sound from Colm in the driver’s seat.</p><p>“Sorry,” Aimé mumbled. “Must have— I don’t know. Bad reaction to something I ate, I guess.”</p><p>“I expect so,” Jean-Pierre said, stroking his thumb over each of Aimé’s cheeks, where his beard gave way to flesh. “We’ll put you to bed, and I’ll rub your shoulders. Perhaps, if you can manage it, some crackers before sleep. How does that sound?”</p><p>It embarrassed him. Jean-Pierre could see that in the stiffness of his shoulders and the way he held his knees tight together, the twist of his mouth, but it delighted him, too: his cheeks were warm with more than the exertion of having been ill, and Jean-Pierre noted the slight twitch of his lower lip as he bit the inside of it. A subtle motion, but one Jean-Pierre kept a keen watch for.</p><p>Aimé wasn’t used to being taken care of, from what Jean-Pierre could tell.</p><p>He liked that.</p><p>It wasn’t merely that this was useful – of course it was <em>useful</em> – but that it rather allowed Jean-Pierre to set the terms of their arrangement he might not otherwise, if Aimé had other points of comparison. There was a delightful vulnerability in a man not used to being cared for: one could teach him what it <em>meant</em> to be cared for, and tailor the definition to what one was willing to give.</p><p>Colm brought the car to a stop, and looked at them in the mirror. “You okay getting up the stairs, or you want me to carry you?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre suppressed a giggle at the wide-eyed look on Aimé’s face as he said hurriedly, “I can— I can walk them myself.”</p><p>“Right,” Colm said.</p><p>“<em>Aimé</em>,” Jean-Pierre scolded him, and pinched the lobe of Aimé’s ear, making him hiss in pain. “Thank him.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Aimé mumbled, and Jean-Pierre opened the door, gently taking Aimé by the hands and pulling him out of the car, keeping himself all but glued to Aimé’s side as they rose up the stairs. Aimé was significantly shorter than him, and as they ascended the stairs, Aimé’s cheek pressed against Jean-Pierre’s chest, making him smile.</p><p>At the top of the stairs, Asmodeus met them, a leather clipboard in his hands – he was writing a letter, Jean-Pierre supposed, and it was probably a personal one, based on how quickly he closed the case when he saw Jean-Pierre’s glance.</p><p>“Ill?” Asmodeus asked, without surprise.</p><p>“Mmm,” Aimé hummed, his embarrassment palpable.</p><p>“I’ll make you some tea,” Asmodeus said softly to Aimé, giving Jean-Pierre a small nod of acknowledgement, and Jean-Pierre, pleased, returned it as he brought Aimé into his bedroom. Aimé just bowed his head further – they really did <em>need</em> to discuss his capacity for please and thank you, but that was a matter for later, Jean-Pierre supposed. He’d learn his manners eventually.  </p><p>Once he’d undressed him, he gave Aimé a chemise of his, an oversized one that didn’t fit Aimé <em>too</em> tightly, and he watched Aimé’s expression go to one of protest to one of uncertain pleasure as he felt how soft and worn the cotton was, how smooth it felt on his skin.</p><p>It fit him rather well, actually.</p><p>“Do remind me to put you into some of my clothes more often,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “You look very fine in a blouse.”</p><p>“Please,” Aimé muttered as he reclined on the pillows. “I’m already sick.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre chuckled, and descended the stairs.</p><p>“Oh,” he said at what he found there. “Hello, George.”</p><p>“Hello, Jean-Pierre,” George said brightly, giving Jean-Pierre a dazzling smile. He was sitting at the coffee table in the living room with a jigsaw in front of him, which in its way was rather adorable, but also meant that Colm didn’t trust him to hold a whittling knife, which was what he ordinarily started with, with new angels.</p><p>“Did your little nicotine addiction program, then,” Colm said darkly as Jean-Pierre entered the kitchen. As Asmodeus set a teapot on a tray for them, already drawing on its lid with his own, flowing style of enchantment, Jean-Pierre reached for some crackers from their box, and laid them on a plate with a little fruit and cheese.</p><p>“It works,” Jean-Pierre said primly. “Why fix something that isn’t broken?”</p><p>“Why not just break it further?” Colm agreed sardonically,</p><p>“Why do you always aim these little barbs at me, and not at him?” Jean-Pierre asked, nodding to Asmodeus as he turned to look at Colm. He crossed his arms over his chest, pressing his lips together very tightly, watching Colm’s sour face. “<em>He’s</em> broken far more men than I have – and he really breaks them. I just mould them into shape.”</p><p>“Thank you for drawing me into the argument,” Asmodeus said dryly, without offence. He finished the enchantment on the teapot, and then reached for Jean-Pierre, curling his fingers in Jean-Pierre’s hair for a moment, a pleasant pressure, before he drew away.</p><p>“You’re welcome,” said Jean-Pierre. “And <em>really</em>, Colm, what would you rather – that he <em>keep</em> smoking?” Jean-Pierre pouted his lips as he asked the question, raising his eyebrows in a way he knew made his eyes look that much the larger.</p><p>Colm’s falter was infinitesimal, but undeniably present, before he said, “And the drink? Are you going to dispel him of that, too?”</p><p>“He’ll drink less when he is happier.”</p><p>“You’re the key to that, are you?”</p><p>“I don’t see anyone else queuing up for the privilege.”</p><p>“Oh, is <em>that</em> why you picked one so ugly this time? Less competition?”</p><p>“Where I’m concerned, there’s no such <em>thing</em> as competition.”</p><p>Colm smiled, a kind of severe, knife-edge smile that Jean-Pierre resented being aimed at him. “And Rupert?” he asked kindly.</p><p>All the enjoyment to be found in exchanging barbs with one’s brother faded quite abruptly with Jean-Pierre’s possession of the high ground, and he turned on his heel, laying some foil over the cheese plate before he put his hands through the handles of the tray, but he didn’t pick it up.</p><p>“<em>Colm</em>,” Asmodeus scolded.</p><p>“What? He’s just pissy that he’s not getting his way, except that he <em>is</em> fucking getting it, because I’m not going to stop him, and neither are you.”</p><p>“Colm,” Asmodeus said again, and Jean-Pierre heard Colm release a wordless, irritable sound, and tell George they were going to the pub. Asmodeus lingered beside him even as the door slammed, his clipboard held loosely to his chest. “Okay?” he asked finally.</p><p>“Mm,” Jean-Pierre hummed noncommittally, unable to work past the abrupt, heavy pressure in his belly, and he picked up the tray.</p><p>Aimé had already turned the television on when Jean-Pierre came upstairs, and to Jean-Pierre’s delight, he had apparently made a selection himself – it was not <em>Rome</em>, but another period drama, and Jean-Pierre beamed, delighted.</p><p>“D’you mind?” he asked hoarsely.</p><p>“Not at all,” Jean-Pierre said warmly, feeling some of the coiled anxiety in his gut disperse, and when he released his wings again, curling them about his shoulders as he held Aimé’s head in his lap, Aimé relaxed so entirely one might have thought him a housecat instead of an alcoholic. He breathed very evenly, relaxing utterly under the gentle curl of Jean-Pierre’s fingers through his hair.</p><p>“You don’t have to,” Aimé mumbled later, sprawled on his belly, when Jean-Pierre sat on top of him, his fingers sliding up under the fabric of the blouse and pressing on the muscle of Aimé’s shoulders, dragging his fingers down either side of his spine. Aimé groaned from very low in his throat as Jean-Pierre searched for the knots and found them, pressing on them until they smoothed out beneath his touch, leaving Aimé liquid and easy.</p><p>Such wonderful sounds eked from his throat, hoarse and husky and full to the brim with pleasure, and Jean-Pierre wondered, in an idle way, what it might be like to fuck him, how much noise he’d make if Jean-Pierre opened him up, loosened his muscles, that way.</p><p>“I know I don’t have to,” Jean-Pierre said idly, dragging his fingernails down the centre of Aimé’s back, making him shudder. “But I like to very much. It is only natural to soothe a companion’s ills, when he is ailed by them, and wish to bring him relief. It bothers you?” He felt Aimé stiffen again, saw the slow, darkening flush on the back of his neck, and not for a moment did he let up in his attentions, still pressing on the taut muscles, still working out the tension in them and delighting in the jump and twitch of Aimé’s body before he slackened further.</p><p>“No,” Aimé muttered, scarcely even audible, and Jean-Pierre smiled. It was so very satisfying, to really introduce a man to pleasure.</p><p>“Such a delight,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Such strong shoulders, such a fine waist, such beautiful skin.”</p><p>It was an experiment, and one that yielded curious results: Aimé released a tight, muffled sound, like a wheel made squeaky with rust, and shifted slightly away from Jean-Pierre’s hands, but as much as the praise wrought in him this small protest, his hips still shifted underneath Jean-Pierre’s waist as he rocked himself down against the bed beneath them.</p><p>Interesting.</p><p>Not to be explored tonight, no – but something to keep in mind.</p><p>Aimé’s shoulders were heavy beneath Jean-Pierre’s hands, thick and resistant to the anodyne pressure of his touch, but there was something satisfying in playing this instrument, in bringing it around to his own desires. He liked Aimé’s body – there was muscle on him you wouldn’t expect from the way he slouched, his steps more graceful than one might expect when he wasn’t too drunk, too, and yet he was plump enough to be warm and comfortable when Jean-Pierre chose him as a pillow.</p><p>“You are a boxer?” he asked softly.</p><p>In a sleepy, distracted mumble, Aimé said against the pillows, “You saw the trophies in my room?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre frowned slightly – he hadn’t, but then, he hadn’t looked very closely into Aimé’s bedroom, and it had been quite dark inside. “I noticed the way you move,” he said, “and you have very strong shoulders, good arms.”</p><p>“And a bashed-up face,” Aimé added.</p><p>“I like your face,” Jean-Pierre said honestly, and Aimé shivered under his hands.</p><p>“You like scars?”</p><p>“I have scars,” Jean-Pierre reminded him. “You think they make me less beautiful?”</p><p>“That’s different,” said Aimé. “You were beautiful to begin with. Your scars just emphasise it – mine do the same, but in the other direction. You must see how people look at me when we walk around.”</p><p>“I do not care what other people think of your face,” Jean-Pierre said primly. “I like it very much, and you are not to change it.”</p><p>There was a hesitation, and then a strange catch in Aimé’s voice as he asked, “No?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Aimé shifted underneath him, and Jean-Pierre raised himself up on his knees to let Aimé turn onto his belly, looking up at Jean-Pierre. His crooked lips were shifted into that shy, crooked smile, and in the light from the lamp, the difference in the colours of his eyes was very clear, particularly as the green one’s pupil was as large as it ever was, and the hazel one was constricting as it ought.</p><p>“You studying anatomy in my face right now?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled, and gently touched two fingers to the side of Aimé’s left eye. “Mydriatic pupil,” he said softly, and put his fingers down on the other side, “Miotic pupil.”</p><p>“I don’t get you,” Aimé said lowly.</p><p>“Of course you do,” said Jean-Pierre. “You have me now.”</p><p>Aimé’s eyes closed as he released a small laugh, and Jean-Pierre stroked his face, tracing his fingers over the skin before moving his fingers lower, trailing over the bristles of his beard.</p><p>“You feel better?” he asked softly.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé mumbled. There was something disbelieving in his tone, even as he looked back up at Jean-Pierre, something disbelieving, uncertain, <em>grateful</em>. “Thanks to my doctor.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre trailed his thumb over the curve of Aimé’s lip, tracing where the lips were uneven, where before, they had been split, and scarred. “You do not box any longer?”</p><p>“I don’t really do anything anymore,” Aimé said dully.</p><p>“You paint,” Jean-Pierre reminded him. “You read philosophy.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “I guess.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned in and kissed him, gently brushed their lips together, and the sigh Aimé released was so very sweet. There was nothing quite like the sigh of an atheist seeking benediction.</p><p>“We should sleep,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “I must rise very early.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said, and stayed in his place beneath Jean as Jean leaned over him to turn out the light.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>“Why are you angry?” George asked.</p><p>Some winged angels, Colm was aware, did drink alcohol, but the ones that did had an obscenely low tolerance for it, and according to Jean-Pierre, liver damage was inevitable and fairly swift in setting in.</p><p>George had taken one small sniff of lager a few days back, and had gagged on the strength of that alone, so he drank a glass of blackcurrant squash instead.</p><p>“Jean,” Colm said slowly, pressing his fingers against the table, “treats his boyfriends in a way that I don’t like.”</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“He’s possessive. And… controlling. He hurts them.”</p><p>George frowned, and Colm could feel his confusion as he thought this over, taking it in. “Why do they date him? If he does that?”</p><p>Colm opened his mouth, closed it, and then sighed. “You know how I told you, George, I wouldn’t always be able to give you the answers?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“This is one of those times.”</p><p>“Oh,” George said, and then he said, with a bright smile, “Oh, the pool table is open now, Colm.”</p><p>He caught it, this time. It was well-hidden, especially coming from someone who was new in his body, who was probably curating his own emotional expression through instinct alone, but Colm caught the slight chink in George’s armour. He caught the wave of anxiety underneath it, when George projected a sort of curious excitement.</p><p>The deception didn’t bother him, not really – it didn’t come from George wanting to harm anybody, probably came from wanting the opposite.  </p><p>“Will you show me?” George asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm said, nodding, and he smiled slightly as he patted the other angel’s shoulder. “Let’s play.”</p><p>He did feel better, after a few pints and a few rounds of pool, and one particularly terrifying round of darts before Colm took the darts gently out of George’s hands, and suggested they play on a night the pub was empty.</p><p>That night, sprawled out on the sofa in Colm’s bedroom, underneath the blankets and looking at him sleepily, George asked, “Do you remember anything? Before the Fall?”</p><p>“No,” Colm said. “I remember the feeling of being in the Host, and there were tables of numbers, I think, or… or something. That’s all. Why, do you?”</p><p>“I measured things,” George said quietly. “I had a scales. And when I said— when I said… what they were… Someone wrote them down. Could that have been us?”</p><p>“Maybe,” Colm murmured. “Anything’s possible. You remember anything else?”</p><p>“No,” George said in a low, sad voice. “Do you think it matters?”</p><p>“I don’t know, George. I don’t think so.”</p><p>George nodded his head, and Colm fell into his own bed, sighing.</p><p>Sleep came easily.</p><p>The dreams weren’t so good.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. No Smoking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“You sure you can’t miss it?” Aimé asked from his place in bed, buried underneath the blankets, and Jean-Pierre looked at him with his lips curled in an indulgent smile, even as his fingers moved slowly over the lacing on his blouse. It was a dark purple, the colour of Ancient Greek wine, and it looked good against Jean-Pierre’s pale skin, tightly moulded to him. Aimé wondered if he ever wore corsets – he seemed like the type. “How many times have you sat through the exact same lecture?”</p><p>“It is not the exact same,” Jean-Pierre said, pouting out his lips and giving Aimé a disapproving look. “The points of anatomy have changed many times since first I began to study them, you know. We discover new things about the human body all the time – the science evolves, Aimé, as does man himself.”</p><p>“You ever listen to yourself talk, Jean? You’re so full of shit.”</p><p>“Jean-Pierre,” l’ange corrected him, but his smile grew slightly wider, its curve growing more pronounced.</p><p>“Your brothers don’t call you that.”</p><p>“You are my brother now?”</p><p>“No, but—”</p><p>“Then you call me Jean-Pierre,” was the curt response, and Aimé leaned back on the pillows, spreading his legs under the blankets, and Jean-Pierre glanced down at the movement of the layered sheets.</p><p>“Will you punish me if I don’t,” Aimé asked, raising his eyebrows, “<em>Jean</em>?”</p><p>“A terribly appealing seduction,” Jean-Pierre said as he drew an oversized, black-knitted jumper over his shoulders, hiding the blouse in all its tight-fitting glory. Aimé would call it a tragedy, but he supposed it meant people wouldn’t be able to ogle Jean-Pierre the way Aimé liked to. “But I must go to school. You can stay here, if you wish it. Colm and Asmodeus will not trouble over your being here.”</p><p>“I might sleep a little longer,” Aimé said. “Thanks for, uh, for taking care of me last night.”</p><p>“How could I do anything less?” was the softly-spoken response, and Jean-Pierre looked directly at him, his gaze intent.</p><p>Aimé swallowed hard, burning with embarrassment. It was too much when Jean-Pierre looked at him like that, and it had been too much the night before. He’d never really been looked after like that, when he’d been sick – Jean-Pierre had never stopped touching him the whole night, had held his mug up to his mouth for him to drink, had stroked his shoulders, played with his hair.</p><p>He’d never really gotten sick as a child, and he remembered the one time he’d had a bad flu when he’d been thirteen or so, and lying in bed in the school infirmary, with the nurse coming every hour or so to check his temperature. The times he’d been in hospital, after he’d started boxing – after he’d started getting into fights – his mother would never say a word to him, would just come, pick him up, and take him home again when she could.</p><p>He laid still, watching as Jean-Pierre brushed out his hair, and then glanced at his phone.</p><p>“Hm,” he hummed softly, and then he turned on his heel, dragging his jumper back over his head. Aimé looked at his back, at the vents that Jean-Pierre had cut into the back of all his shirts and blouses – you didn’t even really notice them, if you weren’t looking for them, because it just looked like additional fabric.</p><p>When Jean-Pierre’s wings came free, Aimé sighed at the sight of them, and he sat up, keeping wrapped in the blanket as he moved forward on his knees.</p><p>“You know you’re beautiful,” Aimé said as he reached out, beginning to comb his fingers through the lines of soft, golden feathers, feeling them slightly oily under his fingers, like hair when it was greasy. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, just different, and like this, kneeling at Jean-Pierre’s back, his lungs were filled with that frankincense smell that he now knew was angel wing oil. “So I won’t tell you you are.”</p><p>“But, <em>Aimé</em>,” Jean-Pierre said, turning to Aimé over his shoulder, looking at him between the curve of each wing before he spread them out. His expression was pleading. “What if I <em>forget</em>?”</p><p>“You’re such a spoilt brat,” Aimé said, and when Jean-Pierre looked indignant, he pressed on one of the weird-looking, swollen openings at the base of his right wing – an oil gland – and Jean-Pierre groaned. Pale golden oil poured over Aimé’s fingers, smoother and slicker than any lube on the planet, and Aimé spread it between his fingers, beginning to drag his fingers through the feathers, scratching slightly at the actual flesh of Jean-Pierre’s wings as he combed through, and kissing the back of his neck when he shivered.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was so warm under him when he laid his cheek in the centre of Jean-Pierre’s back, and he closed his eyes and just groomed the wings without looking. This was how you groomed wings, apparently – you just combed through the feathers with your fingers, scratched away any bits of dirt or clumped-up oil that stuck in place.</p><p>He didn’t mind pulling out the feathers that were loose, but there was something about plucking out the bent or broken ones that didn’t quite sit well with him. Colm and Asmodeus did it all the time, just reached out and pulled feathers out of Jean-Pierre’s wings, and Jean-Pierre let out a sharp little gasp at times, but it didn’t seem to hurt him that badly – and even when they took them at the very tip, the feathers always seemed to come out very easily at the quill.</p><p>“You fly much?”</p><p>“Some. I flew back to the US some time ago.”</p><p>“How fast do you fly?”</p><p>“I normally fly at, hm. Ninety kilometres per hour? If I have a very good tail wind I can fly as fast as one-hundred-and-thirty, even forty, but it is bad for my skin, and chaps my lips, to fly too fast.”</p><p>“Oh, well,” Aimé murmured, pressing kisses to the back of Jean-Pierre’s neck and shoulders, “can’t have that. Who could take you seriously if your lips were chapped.” It was a ridiculous speed, <em>obscene</em>, and Aimé could barely believe it, couldn’t help the image he had in his head of Jean-Pierre kitted out like Amelia Earhart, goggles and everything, zooming along like an eagle with a pretty face.</p><p>“Will you fuck me?” Jean-Pierre asked. He kept squirming when Aimé pressed on the glands at his back, had already unbuttoned his jeans, and Aimé could see the way he’d stuffed one slim hand down the front of them, rocking into his own fingers with greedy little movements of his hips.</p><p>Aimé’s face felt hot, his mouth dry, as he pressed one hand, wet with wing oil, under the loose waistband and hooked a finger against Jean-Pierre’s arse, huffing out a laugh when the angel squeaked and spread his thighs apart. “You have time?”</p><p>“De will drive me.”</p><p>“Brat.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre giggled, and then softly groaned, wings spreading wider as Aimé slid his fingers forward.</p><p>“Could you fuck someone while flying?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, wriggling out of his pants, turning to look at Aimé, blue eyes sparkling.</p><p>“Perhaps,” he said softly, sliding his hands over Aimé’s thighs. “But what if I dropped you?”</p><p>“You’d do that?”</p><p>“Not on purpose!”</p><p>Aimé pulled Jean-Pierre into his lap, and as Jean-Pierre sank down onto him, he found himself concentrating less on the sensations he felt, and more on the expression on Jean-Pierre’s face, the soft ecstasy writ on his pretty features, the pink part of his perfect lips, the close of his eyes.</p><p>Maybe it was because he was tired, or still sick, but he didn’t really feel incredibly motivated to chase his own orgasm – he fell back on the bed and stared lazily up at Jean-Pierre, let him take whatever he wanted from him.</p><p>“Will I fuck you to sleep, Aimé?” Jean-Pierre asked sweetly, sliding his palm over the curve of Aimé’s cheek.</p><p>He was massaging strange patterns on the front of Aimé’s shoulders, his chest, skilled fingers palpating on the muscle and flesh, and it did feel good, but he moved so slowly that it really <em>was</em> soporific, and Aimé sighed, his eyes falling closed.</p><p>“You can do whatever you want to me,” he mumbled. “Asleep or awake.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre chuckled. “Yes,” he murmured, leaning in to kiss the side of Aimé’s temple. “I knew that. But it is nice to have permission.” Jean-Pierre’s hands carded through Aimé’s hair then, his fingers pressing and massaging on his scalp, and Aimé, head heavy, felt himself sink back further into the pillows.</p><p>When he woke, Jean-Pierre had wrapped the blankets back around him, and Aimé was alone in the bedroom. It was past noon, and Aimé crawled out from under the blankets, threw on a jumper and his joggers after he’d taken a piss. He hesitated, glancing at his shoes and socks – he still felt weird, going downstairs in any state of undress, no matter than Jean-Pierre had told him to stay, and no matter than Jean-Pierre frequently lounged around his brothers in no clothes at all, Aimé still felt uncertain about being seen barefoot.</p><p>He pulled on his socks, and went downstairs.</p><p>Asmodeus’ bedroom door was open, and he could hear the shower running: distantly, he could hear the angel singing, and although he couldn’t really make out the words or even the melody, the sound of it was deep, resonant, and distinctly inhuman. It was the sort of beautiful, Aimé suspected, that wasn’t naturally intended for human ears, and as he descended the stairs, he rubbed at his chest to try to dispel the weird, lingering echo of the song’s vibration in his chest.</p><p>The man at the table was unfamiliar.</p><p>“Hi,” Aimé said slowly, and the man looked up at him.</p><p>He was handsome, Aimé supposed, but older – he was in his forties or his fifties, maybe, with grey hair, and a messy beard growing patchily on his cheeks. There were heavy shadows under his eyes, and he wore a black shirt and black trousers – he wasn’t wearing a white collar, but Aimé was fairly sure…</p><p>“Father?”</p><p>“Good afternoon,” the priest said, looking away from Aimé and at the surface of the kitchen table, touching his fingers to the wooden surface.</p><p>The priest’s hair was messy. His clothes looked not slept-in, but ruffled, and one of the buttons on his shirt was missing – Aimé didn’t know if it was fair to assume that he’d lost it when ripping the shirt off, or when someone else was, but the man stunk of sex, and the collar only mostly hid the bruises bitten into his neck.</p><p>“I’m Aimé,” he said, trying not to sound… Well, he’d never seen a priest who’d obviously just been railed by an angel before. He didn’t really have a script for it – he doubted anybody did, unless Asmodeus made a habit out of this (he could only assume it was Asmodeus, because Colm was a devout Catholic, and he didn’t think this counted as taking communion), and Colm and Jean-Pierre were used to it. “You, uh. You have a good night?”</p><p>“Let’s not discuss it,” said the priest, which was all Aimé wanted, really.</p><p>He turned on the kettle, taking the bottle of vodka Jean-Pierre had put aside for him, and he felt the father’s gaze on him as he poured a measure of it into his coffee. He held up the bottle in silent invitation, and just as silently, the priest pushed his mug toward him, and didn’t give the nod for him to stop pouring until Aimé had poured two and a half measures into it.</p><p>“You want some coffee with your vodka?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” said the priest.</p><p>“I think we’re both kind of beyond judgement at this point, don’t you?” Aimé asked, and took a drink from his own mug.</p><p>“You were with Delacroix?”</p><p>“Yeah, he’s gone to class,” Aimé said, opening the fridge and looking at the headache-inducing, brightly coloured array of fresh fruit and vegetables inside. He stared for a second, wondering if he could stomach a platter of fruit for lunch, and then he slowly closed the fridge again. “De drive him?”</p><p>“De?”</p><p>“Asmodeus.”</p><p>“I… think,” the priest muttered, and rubbed at his eye. “I was insensible at the time.”</p><p>Not asleep: insensible.</p><p>Aimé opened his mouth to ask, but Asmodeus came down from upstairs, and Aimé stared at his shirtless chest, at the moisture still glistening on the finely chiselled shape of his chest, his abs. Asmodeus wasn’t muscular like Colm was, in a sexy way, but like a normal human – he looked muscular in the way a model did, as if he was dehydrated as Hell and underweight to make every bit of muscle stand out.</p><p>He was towelling off his hair, dressed only in a pair of grey slacks, and as he stood there, stared at by both Aimé and his priest, Asmodeus asked, “You need to eat something, Jim. Let me cook for you.”</p><p>“I didn’t hear a question in there,” Jim muttered, and Asmodeus ran a hand through his damp hair as he pulled the towel down: obviously, where Asmodeus had combed his fingers through, it looked perfect, as if he’d intentionally gelled a bedhead into place.</p><p>“Aimé,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said, and then coughed. “I mean— hi.”</p><p>“Joining us for brunch?”</p><p>“Oh, no, I—”</p><p>“Sit,” Asmodeus ordered cleanly, showing his teeth as he gave one of his weird, emotionless smirks, and Aimé sank into the seat across from “Jimmy” the priest, unable to stop his gaze from falling to Asmodeus’ arse as he sauntered past, flicking on the flame on the hob and taking two frying pans from their cupboard, putting them both on the heat. “Feeling better?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “Thanks.”</p><p>“You think you can handle a full meal?” Aimé’s stomach gave a plaintive rumble before he could say anything, and Asmodeus’ rich chuckle made Aimé shiver. “I see.”</p><p>“You were sick?” asked the priest, and Aimé nodded.</p><p>“It passed pretty quickly. I just feel a bit run down. My cigarettes down here?” he asked, glancing around the kitchen.</p><p>“Don’t smoke before a meal, Aimé,” Asmodeus said, in a voice that might have been chiding, if it weren’t toneless. It was hard to judge Asmodeus most of the time. “But no, they aren’t. They’re not in Jean’s room?”</p><p>“Uh uh.”</p><p>“Well, he must have left them in the restaurant, you know Jean doesn’t like you smoking.”</p><p>“You have any?”</p><p>“Do I look that stupid to you, Aimé?” Asmodeus asked, turning to look at him with one eyebrow raised, his lips pressed together, slightly pouted out. It was precisely the same expression he’d seen on Jean-Pierre’s face a hundred times since knowing him, and somehow the two of them wore it completely differently. “You think I want my little brother crawling down my throat, nagging me to stop smoking like he does you?”</p><p>“He doesn’t nag,” Aimé said. “He just… complains sometimes. Makes a face.”</p><p>“Hmph,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“You always fuck priests?” Aimé asked, irritated for reasons he didn’t want to consider in detail, and very slowly, Asmodeus rotated on his heel, looking at Aimé sternly, his green eyes alight with a glower that made Aimé feel as tiny and as unimportant as he had just crawled out of the primordial ooze. It was what he’d been asking for, really, so he supposed he couldn’t complain.</p><p>He looked at Jim, watched him unscrew the cap of the vodka bottle, and pour a little more of it into his mug.</p><p>Asmodeus was a good cook, and even though he didn’t eat any himself, he put bacon onto Aimé’s plate and onto Jim’s, and they ate in strange silence. Aimé laid down on the couch after that, half-dozed underneath a blanket, listened to the priest and Asmodeus talk.</p><p>“Father O’Flaherty sent me a text this morning,” said the priest. “Asked how my family is doing.”</p><p>“What did you tell him?” was the quiet response.</p><p>“I said I would be back on Monday.”</p><p>“For how long, I wonder?”</p><p>“I’m not leaving the priesthood.”</p><p>“You think Christ wants you back in his arms, after you’ve been in mine?”</p><p>“Asmodeus, are you really so convinced that you trump God’s claim to every soul?”</p><p>“Your cock seems to think I do,” said Asmodeus, and then said, “Aimé, if you are going to eavesdrop on other people’s conversation, make yourself useful and wash up.”</p><p>“I’m sleeping,” Aimé said.</p><p>“You shall be hurting if you don’t get up now.”</p><p>Aimé laughed despite himself, and crawled out from beneath the blankets, went up to the sink and washed the dishes up.</p><p>He had a vague thought of wanting to stay in the house until Jean-Pierre came home, but his classes weren’t finished today until seven, and what with the bus, he wouldn’t actually be home until eight.</p><p>He bought a pack of cigarettes and some booze on the way home, held the bag loosely at his side as he went up in the lift. He’d drunk a little more than he’d meant to before getting on the bus, and there was a pleasant buzz in his head as he came to his door, clumsily missing the key a few times before he managed to slide it home, turning it in.</p><p>The first thing he noticed was the smell.</p><p>His apartment, typically, smelt like paint and cigarette smoke: when he crossed the threshold, the scent was foreign to him, a sweet, citrusy scent that lingered on the air and greeted him gently, like a summer breeze. He stepped slowly forward, kicking the door shut behind him, and stared wonderingly around his apartment.</p><p>The kitchen was sparkling, the sink scrubbed clean, the plates stacked away, the bins empty for the first time in months; the rest of the place had been hoovered, dusted, and the curtains had been thrown open, letting light shine in. It barely looked like his own apartment, and he moved forward, staring around until he saw, on a neatly-folded pile of freshly-washed clothes, a neat card, covered in Jean-Pierre’s nearly illegible, old-fashioned handwriting.</p><p>“<em>Aimé,</em></p><p>
  <em>I hope you do not mind. I hired a cleaning service so that you might return, recovered, to a home that would only encourage your recovery. It is difficult to clean when one does not know where to start: it is difficult, too, to feel well when one’s home is not. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Affectionately, </em>
</p><p><em>Jean-Pierre</em>.”</p><p>Holding the card in his hand felt like it burned him, and he set it down, staring at his own fingers before he moved to the balcony as if in a daze, taking the box of cigarettes out of his pocket as he stepped out onto the balcony. They’d even power-washed the floor out here, it seemed to him, because there was a square of perfectly white floor at the edges of the canopy.</p><p>He felt like crying.</p><p>It didn’t really well up in him, exactly. There was no burn in his eyes, no feeling that they’d actually overflow: he just sort of knew, in a distant way, that he wanted to cry, that he was overwhelmed and he needed to cry, but it wouldn’t come.</p><p>When he took a drag of his cigarette, he vomited again, and the sense of powerless overexposure was replaced with rage.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Colm texted him to let him know, when he asked, that Aimé had gone home to his own apartment, and after picking up some fruit in town, Jean-Pierre made his way up to Aimé’s place. When he texted, there was no reply, and so he was surprised when he pushed open the door to Aimé’s apartment and heard music playing, saw him painting.</p><p>Several canvases were spread out on the floor, and Aimé didn’t notice him, didn’t hear him over the blasting music, some alternative pop Jean-Pierre didn’t really recognise.</p><p>He was painting feverishly, like a man possessed, and he was dressed only in his joggers, his shirt thrown aside. Sweat glistened on his skin, and Jean-Pierre noticed, not without a small amount of concern, that he seemed somewhat pale and drawn. The paintings were beautiful, an impressionistic vision of blood on cobbled streets, and the wet paint glistened as much as Aimé himself.</p><p>“Aimé,” he said softly, and Aimé turned to look at him with his eyes wild, flicked off the music with a tap of a button on his phone. For a moment, he stared at Jean-Pierre, breathing heavily, his whole body shaking.</p><p>He looked ill – he had been smoking again, Jean-Pierre would wager.</p><p>“What the <em>fuck</em> is wrong with you?” he demanded.</p><p>Ah. Yes. He <em>had</em> been smoking.</p><p>“Nothing,” Jean-Pierre said, spreading his hands as he slid his bag from his shoulder, and set it delicately upon the ground. “As you yourself have attested, Aimé, I am a testament to God’s perfection on Earth.”</p><p>“Not fucking cute, Jean,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre considered correcting him, but watching the wild way Aimé swigged from a shoulder of vodka, he thought perhaps it would be best to leave that matter for another time.</p><p>“You are angry with me,” Jean-Pierre said quietly, pressing his lips loosely together, and he looked away, wearing an expression of shame like a veil as he looked at Aimé’s apartment. “I am sorry. I thought you would like it, that it would ease your troubles – I did not mean to wound you.”</p><p>“You thought I’d <em>like</em> it?” Aimé demanded, and Jean-Pierre continued to wear his innocence as he stroked over the pages stacked upon one of the central tables, where the cleaning service he had hired had placed all of Aimé’s documents together. The one on top was the one Jean-Pierre had been most interested in: it was an information packet on how to quit smoking.</p><p>“It adds to our sense of stress, Aimé, to live in a chaotic environment,” Jean-Pierre said, and then added, earnestly, “I did advise them not to touch your paints, and I assure you, I—”</p><p>“I’m not talking about the fucking <em>cleaners</em>, Jean.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre parted his lips, widened his eyes, looked at Aimé and wore innocence on his face, but mixed a little hurt into it. There was a sort of delicious triumph in the way Aimé faltered at his expression alone. “What, then?” he asked, furrowing his brow.</p><p>“The cigarettes,” Aimé said.</p><p>“The cigarettes,” Jean-Pierre said, for all the world like a man who didn’t comprehend.</p><p>“You’ve been— you’ve been…” He was losing steam now. Faced with Jean-Pierre’s apparent confusion, he evidently found it difficult to sustain his rage, which was all for the best. Rage was attractive, in some men – in Aimé, it was not nearly so handsome as his curiosity, or his intrigue. “My cigarettes,” Aimé said.</p><p>“You think I have been poisoning your cigarettes?” Jean-Pierre asked, weaving scepticism into his tone.</p><p>“You don’t want me to fucking smoke.”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre agreed. “I do not like the taste of the tar on your tongue when you kiss me – you think, perhaps, I prefer the taste of bile?”</p><p>Aimé stumbled at that, set his bottle down, and Jean-Pierre moved forward, touched his fingers to Aimé’s forehead with authority, letting his frown show honest concern – and he <em>was</em> concerned, really. He did not, after all, want for Aimé to feel very ill when he did not need to.</p><p>“You are hot, though not quite feverish,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “You have been sick again?”</p><p>“When I tried to smoke a fag,” Aimé said. “Happened again when I tested it.”</p><p>“You have any allergies?”</p><p>“You’re seriously pretending you didn’t do anything?”</p><p>“Do— What do you think I did?” Jean-Pierre asked, showing more pain in his face now, leaning back slightly, even as he pressed over Aimé’s neck, feeling for his lymph nodes and watching the way he shivered under Jean-Pierre’s touch. “Aimé, last night I arranged to have your apartment cleaned, that you might feel better here – you think I would do this after I poisoned you? What manner of affection would that be?”</p><p>The powerlessness that radiated from Aimé was a delight in its way, and Jean-Pierre tenderly touched his cheek.</p><p>“You don’t want me to smoke,” he said, but it was without much feeling now, and Jean-Pierre could see the panic in his eyes as he thought himself irrational, as he reconsidered his position, as he <em>doubted. </em>How malleable he was, under Jean-Pierre’s fingers – how like clay.</p><p>“I don’t,” Jean-Pierre agreed. “And I want you to drink less, also, and to eat green vegetables, and to be happy. I would not reach this by feeding you poison, Aimé. It wounds me that you think that I would.” He had long-since perfected the art of injecting real hurt into a false statement – it was a skill any man who gave speeches or spoke in a debate chamber needed to master.</p><p>He slid his arms around Aimé’s waist, curled his body around Aimé’s, felt his body frozen under his touch.</p><p>“I overwhelmed you yesterday,” he said softly against the side of Aimé’s head, feeling the way Aimé leaned into his chest. “I hope my attention was not too much for you – I only wish to show you affection, Aimé. I would not cut you with it. Did I? Is that what has prompted these strange accusations?”</p><p>“I keep being sick,” Aimé whispered. “When I try to smoke.”</p><p>“I am sorry,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “I can test you for allergies tomorrow, if you like. Poor thing. It could be a psychological association, of course – if it was really food poisoning, last night, and you took a drag of a cigarette just before you became ill, your brain might have formed some strange association between the two. Neurochemistry can create such strange bonds between one thing and another.”</p><p>“That… That can seriously happen?”</p><p>“Of course,” Jean-Pierre said. “Not often, of course, and it is uncommon – I would think it more likely to be a sudden allergy. Does anything else make you feel so ill as your cigarettes do?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“You have begun smoking a different brand?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“The packaging is the same as it always is?”</p><p>“I think so.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre stroked his cheeks. “We will analyse the cause of this, Aimé,” he promised, tone sweet. “I am sorry to have interrupted your painting – this is very beautiful. You continue to paint. Why don’t I make you some tea, hm?”</p><p>“You don’t have to,” Aimé whispered. “You already… the apartment, I didn’t… I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You don’t need to be sorry,” Jean-Pierre assured him in a voice as warm and sweet as honey. “Paint, my darling. I shall fetch you something to drink without alcohol in it.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM, 21:49: Asmodeus wants to know if he’s realised what you did.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE, 21:51: I don’t know what you mean. : )</strong>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Nicotine Cravings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>He didn’t know why, but he didn’t much want to be alone, after his lectures were finished each day his first week back in college. They were introductory in tone, each of them welcomes back to the hardship and toil of academia, and only a few of them had anything interesting going on.</p><p>He didn’t take notes in any of them – he rarely took notes in any lectures, just sat to the back of the room, slouched in his seat. Lecturers sometimes commented on it when they saw him, and he never replied to them.</p><p>In his time at Trinity, he’d never attended anybody’s office hours, never attended a society event twice in a row, never gone out of his way to talk to a lecturer in person. Sometimes, they talked to him – sometimes, they talked to him about his essays.</p><p>That should have felt good, he supposed, should have been flattering.</p><p>It never felt real – it felt more like it would be a trick, somehow, like it was just a ploy to get into his head, or force him into going to counselling, or something else. He didn’t like to linger on it.</p><p>He felt more… tender, than usual. More vulnerable. Felt like Jean-Pierre had stripped his skin off and left the flesh underneath on display, easy for anybody to get at.</p><p>It only made sense – and it was the biggest irony – that he sought out Jean-Pierre’s company.</p><p>On Monday evening, he slunk, like a stray cat, after Jean-Pierre into his anatomy lecture, and sat quietly, reading his book, as Jean-Pierre’s lecturer talked about the different elements that contributed to a living being, the processes that went on within a mammal’s body.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was listening, it seemed to Aimé, but he barely ever looked at the lecturer or her screen: he gazed, his pretty blue eyes defocused, into the middle distance, and doodled detailed diagrams of bones and cross-sections of organs instead of making notes. They were sat to the right-hand side of the room, and Jean-Pierre sketched with his left hand – he and Aimé had that in common – his left ear tilted toward the doctor, as though it would help him hear her better.</p><p>It was funny, looking at the way he drew. Jean-Pierre’s cross-hatching was old-fashioned, exactly what Aimé would have expected of a man three-hundred years old. He wondered how many anatomy sketches in antique textbooks today were Delacroix originals, and the idea made his lip twitch.</p><p>After the lecture was over, Jean-Pierre loosely curled his fingers into Aimé’s, apparently understanding without being told that Aimé wasn’t much in a mood to talk, and walked with him – half-led him – to his locker. Of course he was the sort of prick to actually <em>get</em> a locker.</p><p>“What’s that?” Aimé asked as he exchanged his book bag for a sleek, wooden case.</p><p>“A fiddle,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“A violin?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre gave him a moue of displeasure. “A <em>fiddle</em>,” he corrected.</p><p>Aimé huffed out a low laugh, and shook his head when Jean-Pierre gestured to the locker, offering for him to drop his own light bag – containing, apart from the book he was reading, two blank notebooks, a handful of pens, half of them empty of ink, and a bottle of merlot – inside. They walked together, Aimé with his hands in his pockets, Jean-Pierre padding confidently forward, his fiddle case in his hand.</p><p>He didn’t know if he was surprised or not, when Jean-Pierre led him through the streets of Dublin, and into a dank, crowded pub basement that smelt of a hastily hidden poitín still, and was full to the brim with people. The ones with instruments were gathered on top of a thrown-together shelf of wood not grand enough to be called a stage, and Aimé separated from Jean-Pierre and walked toward the bar as he took a seat beside Colm, who had a set of uillean pipes in his lap.</p><p>Asmodeus didn’t have an instrument, but he sat in-between his two brothers, sipping at a class of red wine.  </p><p>When Aimé looked at him, Asmodeus met his eye, and tapped the side of the glass. In the dim gloom, he read on Asmodeus’ lips: <em>Order on my tab</em>. Aimé started to shake his head, to wave one hand, but Asmodeus gave him a sort of dismissive gesture. <em>It’s nothing</em>, he mouthed silently. <em>Drink wine with me. Be a hipster</em>.</p><p>Aimé snorted, and turned to the barman. “Uh, can I order on—”</p><p>“You’re with Craddock’s brother, right?” asked the barman, his hands on his hips.</p><p><em>Craddock</em>. Christ. “Uh, yeah.”</p><p>“I’ll put you on his tab,” said the barman. “He English?”</p><p>“I think so,” Aimé.</p><p>“He has good fuckin’ Irish,” muttered the barman. “The Frenchman’s drinking water with lemon. What about you?”</p><p>“Did you, um… Did you open the bottle for De? The wine?”</p><p>“Shiraz,” he said, with undisguised disapproval, but the glass he took down had a big bowl, and Aimé didn’t think it would be the work of a wise man – least of all a wise alcoholic – to turn down a free drink of choice.</p><p>The shiraz was heavy, dry, and smelled thickly of blackberries. It had a pleasant, tangy aftertaste, and he rolled it thoughtfully on his tongue as he stepped forward, putting Jean-Pierre’s water at his foot as he rosined his bow.</p><p>“Go raibh maith agat,” Jean-Pierre said sweetly. The French-accented Munster Irish sounded deeply weird, but there was no hesitation in the syllables, and they sounded correct enough to Aimé, as much as his own Irish was poor.</p><p>He took a stool toward the edge of the back of the room, and it was too dark to read without straining his eyes, so he didn’t try. He leaned back against the cool stone of the wall, his wine glass rested on one of his spread thighs, and he watched the musicians talk to one another.</p><p>They all knew Colm and Jean-Pierre.</p><p>Ancient old men clapped them both on the shoulder as they walked past or took their place on the stage; a pretty, freckled girl clutching an accordion to her breast stopped to talk to Jean-Pierre, and they spoke at length, the two of them gesturing with their instruments, unable to use their hands; a fat, middle-aged man with red cheeks and a bodhran hanging from his clubbed fingers stopped to speak with Jean-Pierre, as Gaeilge, and Aimé heard the word “diabetes” pass between them, saw the way the man laughed when Jean-Pierre scolded him lightly for something, a smile on his face.</p><p>The diabetic called him Doctor.</p><p>Aimé had never been all that one for trad, and that didn’t change, sitting in a crowded pub, smelling other people’s cigarette smoke when he itched to go have one himself, listening to all these musicians go into rounds and jigs and all the rest. His father had wanted him to learn an instrument, but he’d never been able to stick at it beyond playing Baa Baa Black Sheep with two fingers on the piano: he felt like he <em>should</em> feel guilty, listening to all these people play dozens of songs by heart in symphony with one another, but he didn’t, not really.</p><p>The music washed over him, and he watched the camaraderie of it all from the side lines, watched people tap their feet, rap their knuckles on the table, nod their heads.</p><p>When people started nominating songs, a few of them started to be vocal, not just instrumental.</p><p>When Colm started singing, it was a song Aimé didn’t really know, something about  a goat, he thought, but Jean-Pierre started singing in harmony with his brother like they were one voice split into two. Colm’s singing voice was plain but carried well in the room, and it was lower than his speaking voice; Jean-Pierre’s voice went the other way, was higher than when he spoke, but there was a strange resonance in it, that made Aimé feel he’d shatter like glass.</p><p>He liked that feeling.</p><p>Colm and Jean-Pierre walked ahead of them, Jean-Pierre with his fiddle case hanging loosely at his side, Colm with his pipes slung over his shoulder, and his other arm wrapped loosely around Jean-Pierre letting him lean into Colm’s chest as they walked.</p><p>Asmodeus and Aimé walked behind them, and passed the merlot from Aimé’s bag back and forth, both of them sipping directly from the neck of the bottle.</p><p>“This Argentinian?”</p><p>“Close,” Aimé said. “Chilean.”</p><p>“They don’t have that pest there. The thing that blights wine. Do they?”</p><p>Aimé shook his head, pressing his lips loosely together, wondering if he should be impressed or not. Asmodeus didn’t seem at all drunk, didn’t slur his words or stumble, but he was smiling, distantly. It was getting easier to look at his face, but not less uncomfortable. He was just getting used to the glare Asmodeus gave off, the way you got used to a too-hot bath.</p><p>“Phylloxera lice. No, they don’t. Most of us have to graft resistant plants into our crop to escape the Blight, but the Chileans go pretty much free of it.”</p><p>“Us,” Asmodeus repeated, emphasising the sibilant sound, and Aimé looked away.</p><p>“Yeah,” he muttered, and covered the bitter taste in his mouth with more wine. “Can I… De?”</p><p>“Yes?” Asmodeus didn’t look at Aimé: he kept his gaze forward. He walked in a way that was uncomfortably perfect, every step the same, every movement of his arm and shoulder the same as he moved forward, retaining the same rhythm. Asmodeus walked, moved, like he’d been rendered in some complicated computer program.</p><p>“Can I ask you a question?”</p><p>“You can always ask me questions,” Asmodeus said softly, and glanced at him. The evening had drawn dark, and most of the light came from the streetlamps. They made Asmodeus’ eyes shine incredibly green, like a phosphorous flash. “I cannot promise, Aimé, that I will always answer them.”</p><p>Aimé opened his mouth. Closed it. Blurted out, “Do you sing?”</p><p>“Yes,” Asmodeus answered cleanly. “I used to record music, in the twenties through to the forties. I still do, from time to time.”</p><p>“Trad music?”</p><p>“No, that’s their thing.” He gestured toward Jean-Pierre and Colm ahead of them, but he didn’t seem bothered by it, as much as Asmodeus seemed bothered by anything. “I sing cabaret, and jazz. That sort of thing.” Aimé didn’t know how to imagine that, how to imagine Asmodeus as part of a cabaret act. He was too big, too quiet, too subtle – wasn’t cabaret meant to be big, a statement after a statement, with feathers and cymbal crashes?</p><p>“I don’t know if I know what that sounds like,” he said honestly.</p><p>Asmodeus shrugged his shoulders. “Jean has some of my records, if it interests you. I was never a chart topper in the mundane community, Aimé.”</p><p>“That mean you were in the magical one?”</p><p>“I have my fans.”</p><p>“That why you have so much money to throw around?”</p><p> Asmodeus looked at him, his eyes half-lidded, his lips curved into a sly, easy smirk. “Is that the question you wanted to ask?”</p><p>Aimé pressed his lips tightly together, and then inhaled sharply through his nose. There was a pleasant, drunken buzz in his head, but there was something holding him back from really enjoying it, a distant anxiety. He wanted a cigarette. He couldn’t have a cigarette.</p><p>He was… fairly certain he hadn’t become spontaneously allergic to them.</p><p>“De,” he started, and ahead of them, Jean-Pierre turned in Colm’s arms, wrapped around his brother’s chest, his cheek pressed tightly to the curve of one of Colm’s pecs.</p><p>“We should turn off here, Aimé, no?” he asked. “To sleep in your flat?”</p><p>“Uh— Yeah,” Aimé said. “Yeah, Jean, just up ahead.”</p><p>“Jean-Pierre,” was the response, and Aimé huffed out a laugh, closed his eyes for a moment, as Jean-Pierre passed his fiddle to Colm and gave his brother a hug. Aimé felt himself smile, almost without thinking, as Jean-Pierre wound their fingers together, and he watched the way the angel stuck out his neck, raising his chin high in the air, until Asmodeus obediently leaned and kissed him on the cheek.</p><p>“You want one too?” Asmodeus asked darkly when Aimé laughed.</p><p>“On the cheek?” Aimé asked, and Asmodeus cuffed him upside the head. It was a quick motion, and he didn’t actually make enough contact with Aimé’s flesh to really hurt him, but it shocked a surprised noise out of his mouth, and he still grabbed the back of his head reflexively.</p><p>Laughing, he let Jean-Pierre tug him the other way up the path, and listened to Colm – who was half-drunk, and had been using Jean-Pierre to keep himself from staggering – start belting out the Auld Triangle for the benefit of passers-by, shoving Asmodeus and demanding he keep rhythm.</p><p>“Do you like him?” Jean-Pierre asked, after Colm’s song began to fade off into the evening air.</p><p>“Asmodeus?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Uh, yeah,” Aimé said quietly. “Yeah, I think so. Shouldn’t I?”</p><p>“I love him very much,” Jean-Pierre said softly, swinging Aimé’s hand in his own. “He likes you, I think. He does not usually like my boyfriends – it seems to me he does not usually notice them. It pleases me very much, that he likes you. It never occurred to me until now how much his disinterest in my lovers bothered me.”</p><p>Something about that caught in Aimé’s throat, in his chest. He didn’t know what about it, exactly, just that it did. “You, uh… You have a lot of boyfriends?”</p><p>“Not so many.” Jean-Pierre’s expression was pensive, his lips parted. He looked beautiful like this. He always looked beautiful, of course, but he looked beautiful like this, illuminated from several sides by the glows of different streetlights, where the different streaks of bright colour made him look like he’d been painted in oils, made his skin glow and his eyes shine. “Before you, I was with a man named Farhad. He was Persian – he died in ’89.” He paused a moment, and then added, as if it needed adding – which, Aimé supposed, it did – “1989.”</p><p>“How’d he die?”</p><p>“He, ah. He was HIV positive when I met him in ’86. He was not my patient, I was working in a different hospital at the time, but Colm and I both volunteered on every ward we could, during the crisis. It was very… It was not good. Farhad also volunteered, which I found to be very admirable – a lot of young men in his position did their best to pretend such things were not coming for them, tried to distract themselves with other things, but not him. His family stopped speaking to him when he told them he was gay, you see – he knew what it was, to be alone.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s voice was very quiet, pitched low. He sounded sad, obviously, but quietly nostalgic, too. There was a slight curve to his lips, a sort of absentminded smile, distant, fond.</p><p>“His condition worsened two years or so into our relationship. The AZT made him lose a lot of weight, and at the same time, he became increasingly immunocompromised, until he got ill, and it became pneumonia, and…” Jean-Pierre squeezed Aimé’s hand in his own, very tightly. “It is different now, you know. HIV is no longer a death sentence – even after testing positive, most people can live normal, healthy lives. He would like that.”</p><p>“How old was he?” Aimé asked, dry-mouthed, feeling like he should say <em>something</em>. “When he died?”</p><p>“Thirty-one.”</p><p>“All your boyfriends die young?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Some of them,” Jean-Pierre said. “Not you.”</p><p>“Not me?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“What, you’re banning me?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said. “You are to grow old with me, or not to age at all, but those are the only options I shall allow you. You are not permitted to die for at least several decades.” It was said airily, but there was tension in Jean-Pierre’s shoulders and in the column of his throat, and his voice sounded like it would shatter under pressure.</p><p>Aimé wanted to point out that he, an ugly ex-boxer with an alcohol problem, didn’t exactly measure up to some Persian angel who spent his free time taking care of AIDs victims who died tragically young. He figured – he hoped – that Jean-Pierre knew this, but it still felt like it might be worth saying.</p><p>But there was a kind of weird fragility in Jean-Pierre’s voice. His eyes looked a little wet, and he was looking at the street instead of at Aimé himself, and Aimé felt sick to his stomach with the understanding that he didn’t deserve to have an angel holding his hand, that as soon as Jean-Pierre realised how fucking defective he was, he’d drop him and go somewhere else, and he didn’t want him to, he didn’t, but…</p><p>But.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Aimé heard himself say, woodenly. “I’ll make sure you sign my permission slip before I go die anywhere.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled at him. It was a shy smile, one that made him look young, vulnerable, innocent. It made Aimé feel like his heart had dropped out of his chest.</p><p>“So, were all the exes sob stories, or?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, looking forward. “No,” he murmured. “Farhad was an architect. Before him, ah… Bui was a schoolteacher. Rupert was a lawyer. Benoit and Manolis were both soldiers, but Benoit trained in law too, when he was older. Bui died of tuberculosis, he was forty-five; Manolis and Benoit both died in their fifties. Rupert was twenty-six. My first lover, Jules, he was in his sixties.”</p><p>“Sounds like I have a lot of dead guys to compete with,” Aimé muttered. “Were they all saints, like Farhad?” His voice sounded too sharp, and too defensive, and he didn’t know how to stop. He felt like throwing himself in the fucking Liffey, but Jean-Pierre would only drag him out.</p><p>“Not at all,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “Manolis was feral, a street cat. He never had fewer than four blades on him, and often had a grenade ready to throw. Bui could be very cold – he had a sort of quiet, sensible brutality to him. His expectations were very high: woe betide he who did not bow before it. And Jules, Jules was a hedonist.”</p><p>“Like you.”</p><p>“Like me. Some might say I learned from the best.”</p><p>Aimé was quiet for a second, and then started, “How—”</p><p>“Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said, his voice cracking slightly as he spoke, and when he met Aimé’s gaze, there was something pleading in his eyes. “Could we… I am very sorry. Could we discuss something else?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “Yeah, we don’t have to talk about that. Sorry.”</p><p>“What of you?” Jean-Pierre asked. “You have no lovers in your past I ought know about?”</p><p>“No,” Aimé said, feeling his free hand twitch at his side. “No, I’ve never really, uh… No.”</p><p>It wasn’t like he hadn’t slept with people. With girls, mostly, but with guys, too. He’d never really felt any fierce bisexual pride about it – it was Aimé’s quietly held awareness that people would assume a guy as ugly as he was might be bi for the sake of opportunity, and maybe they weren’t entirely wrong.</p><p>He liked sex. Sex in other people’s beds, especially, was ideal, where he could leave afterward without anyone sticking around in his space, where could fuck, bike home, and then paint in peace.</p><p>“All those people in the pub,” Aimé said. “They knew you.”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre agreed. “We go to that trad night regularly. You don’t like it?”</p><p>“I liked it,” Aimé said. “I wouldn’t seek it out. Not if you weren’t there.”</p><p>“Hm,” Jean-Pierre hummed, and brushed his lips over the back of Aimé’s knuckles.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>On Tuesday, Jean-Pierre led Aimé through the city to a food bank in a community centre. Aimé had never been in one before, and he hung back as Jean-Pierre rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and stood beside Colm.</p><p>People bustled around, shouting to one another, laughing. Everyone here knew one another, and he didn’t belong.</p><p>He knew he didn’t belong.</p><p>After fifteen minutes, Jean-Pierre said, “Aimé, be useful. Come here.”</p><p>He obeyed.</p><p>On Wednesday, he had no lectures, and he spent the whole day painting – which is to say, he spent the whole day drinking.</p><p>When Jean-Pierre came home, it was past eleven, and he smelt like his brother’s greenhouse. He clambered into Aimé’s lap where Aimé lay on the sofa, curled his fingers in Aimé’s hair, massaged his scalp.</p><p>“You do not like beer?” he asked softly. Since Jean-Pierre had arranged to have his flat cleaned, he hadn’t let bottles or cans pile up as usual, but he hadn’t drunk beer at home recently, either. There were two bottles of a particularly dry South African white on the table, one entirely drunk, the other with barely half a glass left inside it.</p><p>“Beer’s fine,” Aimé said. The world was spinning, very slowly and clumsily, and Jean-Pierre was its axis: as Aimé looked up at him, he was a static point, the lamp making a glow of golden light behind his head, and the room spun. “But I like wine. I worked on a vineyard, before I went to university. My grandmother’s.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Hm,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé sighed as his hands pulled out of where they were curled in Aimé’s hair, and instead picked up his hands, examining them, turning them over. “These hands… You tell me they are the hands of a labourer?”</p><p>“Not anymore,” Aimé said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre tilted his head to one side, his lips parting in a loose-lipped moue. His expression was curious, but perplexed, and his thumbs delicately traced the curves of Aimé’s knuckles. He turned Aimé’s hands over, then, so his fists were tilted toward the ceiling.</p><p>The scarred lines at Aimé’s wrists, vertical cuts that adjoined the base of his hand on each side, shone in the light. Each was dark pink, raised, and he flattered himself that they were symmetrical. His father might have approved of that, if he’d actually died.</p><p>Jean-Pierre examined them with a sort of impassive curiosity, an expression that Aimé didn’t know how to read in detail.</p><p>“You did not receive these wounds while boxing,” he said thoughtfully.</p><p>“No,” Aimé said. “I didn’t <em>receive</em> them anywhere – they were a gift to myself.”</p><p>“A gift returned, I take it.”</p><p>“A gift snatched out of my hands, let’s say,” Aimé said. “My ashtray caught fire in the other room while I was in the bath, set off the fire alarm. The caretaker found me and called an ambulance. Fucker was an ex-army nurse. Great head for first aid – bound my wrists tighter than anything before he shoved his fingers down my throat and made me vomit out every paracetamol I’d taken.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre chuckled, tracing one finger down the scarred line on Aimé’s right wrist. It tickled.</p><p>“You see,” he said primly, “if you had quit smoking, you might not be here today.”</p><p>Aimé started laughing, closing his eyes and feeling the drink swell back and forth in him like a wave. When Jean-Pierre kissed him, it was slow and sweet, until he pulled back and sputtered.</p><p>“S’that <em>wine</em>?” he demanded. “It’s horrible.”</p><p>“It’s quite tart,” Aimé allowed. “It’s made of chenin blanc – Cabreton blanc. They’re a popular grape in South Africa.”</p><p>“All the best wines are French,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“Do you even know any wines?”</p><p>“… Red,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé laughed again.</p><p>“You’re so fucking ignorant,” Aimé muttered, shaking his head.</p><p>“Tell me about your grandmother’s vineyard,” Jean-Pierre said softly.</p><p>“It was in Montauban.”</p><p>“Was?”</p><p>“It’s gone now. Pieced apart, sold off. She died a few years ago, and then my aunt Margot and her two sons, my cousins, they all died in a car crash, a few months after her funeral. My uncle couldn’t do it on his own.”</p><p>“And with you?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>Aimé slid his hands forward, underneath the fabric of Jean-Pierre’s jumper, dragging his shirt out of his tight waistband. When his hands slid underneath it,  sliding over the tender flesh of Jean-Pierre’s scarred belly, Jean wriggled in his lap, released a ticklish sound.</p><p>“You want to talk sad backstories, or do you want to have sex?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“You are certain you are sober enough to get it up?”</p><p>“Still have a tongue, don’t I?”</p><p>“Will you rinse your mouth out before you kiss me?”</p><p>“I do whatever you tell me to,” Aimé said. “You haven’t noticed that already?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre, for just a second, terrified him. There was a sort of coldness in his eyes, a chill set to his pretty lips. He looked like more than a statue, right now: he looked like a portrait, the sort of portrait you put in your hall to scare the shit out of your visitors.</p><p>“I have noticed,” Jean-Pierre said softly, cold as ice. “Aimé?”</p><p>“Yeah, Jean?”</p><p>It was a well-timed rebellion: Jean-Pierre’s smile gained savagery, but it didn’t fade away. If anything, his eyes glittered brighter. “Will you carry me to bed?”</p><p>“Not sure,” Aimé said. “Let’s see what happens.”</p><p>Thursday morning, Aimé sat, hungover, with scabbing scratches down his back keeping him awake in his metaphysics lecture. He had to sit forward instead of sinking back against his seat like he ordinarily would, and now and then he had to tug at his shirt to keep it from sticking to where the scabs had formed and reformed.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had put disinfectant on them before they’d gone to sleep, but he hadn’t apologised.</p><p>Aimé hadn’t much wanted him to.</p><p>“Uh, Aimé,” said Doc Mason as they left the lecture hall together. Doc Mason was a slow old man, always lumbered slow after his students, and Aimé liked to wait for the rush to pass by before he stepped out into the corridors.</p><p>“Doc?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“New scarf?”</p><p>“It’s a friend’s.”</p><p>“It’s, uh. It’s slipped.”</p><p>Aimé reached up, touched the bruised flesh on his neck. Jean-Pierre hadn’t been a little rough at first, but he hadn’t gotten nasty until Aimé had tried to pin him on his back. There’d been a wildness in Jean-Pierre’s pretty eyes, and a surprising strength in his arms, when he’d shoved Aimé back onto his shoulders and wrapped his hands around his throat.</p><p>He pulled the scarf by one loose tail, so that the loop hid the angel’s marks on his throat.</p><p>“You don’t seem all that scandalised, Doc,” Aimé said.</p><p>“I once knew a woman who could only get off on horseback,” the old man said thoughtfully. “Takes all sorts, Aimé.”</p><p>“Guess it does,” Aimé said, and reached into his pocket for his cigarettes before he remembered. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself, and loped off in the direction of the library.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Discussing Murder</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre went back and forth between the house and Aimé’s flat, but they didn’t spend time together every night. Two nights a week, usually, Jean-Pierre would spend his evening home with Colm or Asmodeus, because Aimé would be painting. His paintings, Colm thought, were genuinely good, not that he knew that much about that sort of thing, but Asmodeus said he was good, and that normally meant quite a lot.</p><p>Jean thought he was good, but Jean didn’t have any more of a head for art than Colm did – but he did talk about Aimé’s art, sometimes, quietly, in a distant sort of way, like in his head he was still wrapped up in Aimé’s canvas and oils.</p><p>Except for Aimé and his classes, though, it didn’t seem to Colm that Jean had made many of his own connections in Dublin just yet. He tagged along a few times when Asmodeus went to the places he liked, dark, hipstery coffee shops that sold forbidden books, or high-class wine bars where Jean couldn’t drink a goddamn thing on the menu but water; or he came with Colm, came to the pubs that Colm had decided were good, tagged along with him to the same food banks, the same church and community meetings.</p><p>It wasn’t that Colm minded at all – he loved having Jean along when it came to going out for music (although it did mean Colm couldn’t slope off to smoke any weed without Jean kicking up a fuss when he came back), and he worked just as hard as Colm did as a volunteer. He just didn’t like it much, when Jean didn’t put himself out there like he did when he <em>didn’t </em>have a new boyfriend. He would, Colm supposed, when Aimé either saw sense and ran, or when Jean settled in with him, but in the meantime, he’d focus on latching into other people’s interests, and not do a damn thing on his own except study.</p><p>George and Colm spent half the week hanging out, and George often came along where Colm went to volunteer. He couldn’t carry a note or remember more than four words to a song, but he liked music, and people liked him where Colm volunteered, thought he was cute.</p><p>“How did you build this?” he’d asked when he’d been at the house last, looking at the greenhouse thoughtfully, and Colm had smiled slightly, put his hand out for George’s notebook – now a staple always stuck to his hip, although learning to draw was a challenge for him – and sketched out the sections of the greenhouse, showed how the glass fit into the frames, how the frames were adhered to one another and fastened to the ground, how the sloped roof gave everything else additional support, and how the tight chain lattice across the roof allowed for more hanging baskets <em>and</em> additional stability.</p><p>He’d be an engineer, Colm thought, or an architect, or something. He could see it in George’s eyes whenever he looked at the way things fit together, and Colm had seen him with Padraic, too, asking how furniture in Padraic’s house had been made, or how tools fit together.</p><p>George had gotten to his knees in the kitchen a few weeks ago, distracted by the drawer on its rollers while putting forks away, and Colm had watched Asmodeus turn off the water, dry his hands, and ease one of the drawers out of the unit. He’d helped Asmodeus pull the wooden utensil trays out, set them on the counter, so that Asmodeus could turn the drawer over and show the wheels, show the staggered slats between the drawer and the unit.</p><p>Colm had taken George upstairs, then, had muscled into Jean’s bedroom while Jean was braiding his hair to pull out the drawer of one of his antique dressers and shown how the same thing was done without wheels.</p><p>George had been fascinated the whole time, and when Jean-Pierre had stood from his bed and pulled a few puzzle boxes from the back of his wardrobe – they’d been Bui’s – and said quietly that George was welcome to play with them so long as he was careful, George had beamed like sunshine.</p><p>He spent some evenings with Padraic, learned ISL which he’d then teach to Colm, and he read… Christ.</p><p>It seemed to Colm that George read ten books a <em>week</em>.</p><p>And Asmodeus…</p><p>“When are you leaving?” Colm asked.</p><p>It was past midday, and the sun was shining down through the window glass in the greenhouse as Asmodeus stood with a spray bottle in his hand, misting Colm’s tomato plants with water. He’d rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to the elbow, and he looked comfortable with the plants, as comfortable as Colm looked himself, most days. His skin shone in the mild light, although Colm was fairly certain that – like Jean – he was missing the sun in Texas.</p><p>“Soon,” Asmodeus said quietly. “Before the end of the month.”</p><p>“Where to next?”</p><p>“New Zealand.”</p><p>“Auckland?”</p><p>“Haruru.” Asmodeus reached out, taking a turning leaf from one of the cucumber plants and tugging it off the vine, crumpling it into nothing in his palm. “I will be back.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know.” Colm shook some of the potting soil off his hands and put the basil plant, now repotted, onto the table, then reached up and gently swung one of the strawberry baskets hanging from the chain. “We just miss you when you’re gone.”</p><p>Asmodeus turned to glance at him, and he smiled slightly, his lips curving up. The blankness of emotion in him was as disconcerting as ever. “I miss you too,” he said quietly. “But the house will hardly be empty. George is in and out, and you have Bedelia and Padraic to visit, of course – and Benedictine will be here come December.”</p><p>“What about you?”</p><p>Asmodeus looked at Colm, his expression unchanging, and then he tilted his head slightly to the side. “What about me?”</p><p>“Will <em>you</em> be back in December? Will you actually be with us at Christmas, or are you gonna spend it with your boyfriend again?”</p><p>“Hamish MacKinnon is not my boyfriend, Colm,” Asmodeus said quietly. The smile stuck on his face, but it was static, frozen, and Colm wished he could take that as a real sign he’d struck a nerve.</p><p>“He’s not a priest, and he’s not an angel,” Colm said. “And I know for a fact you haven’t told our priest about him. Boyfriend is the only word that seems to fit the bill.”</p><p>“I won’t be spending Christmas with him,” Asmodeus said quietly. “I might spend a few days in Nottingham either before I come home to Dublin, or before I go back to work, but I won’t spend Christmas with him. He has other plans.”</p><p>“<em>That</em> guy?”</p><p>“Change your tone,” Asmodeus recommended, enough resonance in his voice that Colm shuddered, and that the panes of glass around them shuddered in their frames, “or change the subject.”</p><p>“What about Aimé?” Colm asked hurriedly.</p><p>The glass stilled, and Colm rubbed at his chest, trying to shake off the uncomfortable sensation that Asmodeus’ voice had left behind. Asmodeus said, more mildly this time, “From what I can gather, he doesn’t get on well with his family. He will likely spend his Christmas with us.”</p><p>This was what Colm had thought. Aimé spent no time at all with his parents, from what he had gleaned – Jean-Pierre had mentioned a few times that they were rather harsh on him, and Aimé never mentioned them. Colm wondered if he’d come to Mass with them on Christmas day to keep stuck to Jean’s side, or if he’d hover around somewhere else.</p><p>Like with De.</p><p>“You like him,” Colm said. “Right?”</p><p>“I do,” Asmodeus said, without shame or hesitation. “You don’t, I take it.”</p><p>“He doesn’t believe in anything,” Colm said. “No faith in God, no faith in humanity, no faith in tomorrow’s sunshine. He’d rather be dead than alive – the only reason he <em>isn’t</em> dead is because he can’t muster the effort needed to fucking end it all.”</p><p>“That bothers you,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm said, “it fucking bothers me. Jean is gonna send him over the edge.”</p><p>Asmodeus chuckled, and shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “No, I think Jean will do precisely the opposite. You think our brother would bait a lover to suicide? What would he gain out of that?”</p><p>“Not saying he’ll do it on purpose,” Colm said. “But with the fucking mind games he plays with his guys, that drives half of them crazy. This one can’t take it. Is that <em>why</em> you like him? Because he’s suicidal? Because we might watch Jean kill another lover?”</p><p>“I find his nihilism refreshing,” was the easy response as Asmodeus set the spray bottle down, and moved to sit down on the small bench over Colm’s toolbox. “You might not see it yet, but I think Aimé will be good for Jean.”</p><p>“Good for <em>Jean</em>? What is he, a fucking sacrifice?”</p><p>“Jean is a hot flame, Colm,” Asmodeus said. “He burns us all. But Aimé can survive it.”</p><p>“And how badly will he be get burned in the process?”</p><p>Asmodeus smiled, showing the white glitter of his teeth as he stood once more to his feet. “Would you like a cup of tea, Colm?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm muttered. “Sure.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre and Colm were at Mass, and somehow, Aimé had gone from lying on the couch, rereading Plato’s Republic with a glass of Bordeaux in his hand, to helping Asmodeus pack his trunk.</p><p>It was an old-fashioned thing, straight out of a fantasy novel, made out of a heavy wood but light when you picked it up. Asmodeus’ room was thick with a complicated web of enchantment that Aimé wasn’t familiar with, but he guessed from the characters that it was very, very old. His chest thrummed with the same symbols, but it wasn’t a threatening energy, just different to what Aimé was used to.</p><p>“These,” Asmodeus said, placing a pile of three neatly folded jumpers into Aimé’s hands, and Aimé carried them over to the chest, neatly packing them in on top of Asmodeus’ silk pyjamas. He had a few sets of them in different colours, and they were impossibly soft when Aimé’s fingers brushed them. If Asmodeus had any qualms about Aimé seeing his nightclothes or his underwear, or anything else, he didn’t show it.</p><p>“Won’t Jean miss some of your wardrobe?” Aimé asked, fingering over the cream-coloured wool of the jumper on top of the pile Asmodeus had handed him, one that he knew Jean-Pierre wore from time to time, because he’d stripped him out of it at least twice.</p><p>“I’m sure he’ll rifle through for whatever I leave behind,” Asmodeus replied, handing Aimé a shoebox containing a pair of brown leather Oxfords. “And if he finds nothing satisfactory in my wardrobe, I’m sure he’ll pick something from Colm’s. Or yours.”</p><p>“No,” Aimé said, sliding the box into the chest, alongside the books Asmodeus had already had him pack, a variety of what looked to be steamy romance in a variety of languages. “He already looked through my clothes. Says none of it’s fit to wear out because it’s all paint-stained.”</p><p>“That won’t last,” Asmodeus said. “He wouldn’t wear something stained for Mass, Aimé, but Jean wears other people’s clothes for the comfort of it, not the aesthetic. It comforts him to wear the second skin of someone who loves him.”</p><p>Aimé didn’t know what to think of that, and so he said nothing. Jean-Pierre’s own wardrobe was a mix of the things that had been tailored to himself, and the clothes that were once, Aimé realised, other people’s, which Jean-Pierre admitted when pressed: one of his scarves had once belonged to Manolis, the Greek revolutionary; a favourite cardigan of his had been Bui’s favourite, and still had the patches he had sewn into the elbows from when he’d taught school in it; half of Jean’s t-shirts, as few of them as he had, had been Farhad’s.</p><p>“You don’t go to Mass,” Aimé said. “You don’t believe in God?”</p><p>“I don’t believe in Catholicism,” Asmodeus said cleanly, passing Aimé two rolled-up scarves. They were fashionable things, made of silk, not made to keep off the heat. “You could say I believe in God, but I don’t worship the concept. Do you?”</p><p>“I was never into it,” Aimé said. “And my parents aren’t devout, so I never really had to go. I did a few times when I was in France, and I liked that better than here, but the actual service wasn’t all that different. I think the congregation was just nicer. Can I ask you a question?”</p><p>“Always. Cufflinks.”</p><p>Aimé took the box, and then asked, “How old are you?”</p><p>Asmodeus smiled at him, and then began bending over his chest of drawers again. “Next question,” he said.</p><p>“Old, right?”</p><p>“Very old.”</p><p>“And you don’t eat meat?”</p><p>“Not usually,” Asmodeus said, beginning to count out pairs of socks and perfectly folded underwear. Jean-Pierre’s room was neat, but neat in the way of a normal person – Asmodeus’ was neat in the way of a man slightly obsessed with neatness, where it looked like everything was put in place with a ruler and a protractor, and even his boxer briefs were folded into impossibly tight little rolls, and stacked in symmetrical rows.</p><p>Aimé wanted to ask questions about Jean-Pierre, really, but there were so many questions about Jean he didn’t know where to start, and it felt easier, somehow, to ask about Asmodeus instead.</p><p>“But you do sometimes?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“So it isn’t a moral issue?”</p><p>“An interesting question,” Asmodeus mused, picking up a flat box filled with underwear – he kept his drawers separated with wooden boxes, and the shoebox he’d picked up earlier had been wooden too – and brought it over to the trunk. “I would not take another life in order to feed myself – it wouldn’t strike me as necessary. But I have no particular compunction over partaking in meat or fish if it has died anyway.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t kill to survive?” Aimé asked, and Asmodeus turned to look at him, one eyebrow gracefully arching.</p><p>“Would you?” he asked.</p><p>“I don’t feel bad about eating meat,” Aimé said. “I guess I think, you know, we’re the dominant species. We eat meat because we’re smart enough to farm other animals, use tools, whatever. People bring up that people wouldn’t eat meat if they had to kill the animals themselves, but there’s plenty of things I wouldn’t eat if I had to do the effort myself – I probably wouldn’t bother with corn on the cob if I had to shuck it myself, or eat cashew nuts, or anything else.”</p><p>“I see,” Asmodeus said. “You think that the taking of a life is no different to any other complex labour?”</p><p>“I don’t think it’s murder to kill a cow,” Aimé said. “They’re bred <em>to</em> be killed, to be eaten. Sure, maybe it’s taxing to kill them, but I don’t think it’s specially taxing.”</p><p>“You believe in murder?”</p><p>“What kind of question is that?”</p><p>Asmodeus chuckled, sitting down on the edge of his bed, and he gestured for Aimé to sit down in the office chair before Asmodeus’ desk, which Aimé did. It was a ridiculously big chair, but the brown leather was soft and welcoming underneath him, and Aimé sank back into it.</p><p>“You’re a philosopher, aren’t you?” Asmodeus asked, looking at Aimé thoughtfully. “You consider the taking of an animal’s life to be acceptable because humans are the dominant species – you have earned your right to kill. But what of one man’s right over another?”</p><p>“Well, I don’t think we should hunt the poor for blood sport, no matter what Fine Gael might go in for,” Aimé said. “I dunno, I think… I think murder’s wrong, when it’s just killing someone out of rage. But there are times when taking someone’s life is justified, I guess.”</p><p>“Euthanasia?”</p><p>“Maybe.”</p><p>“Self-defence?”</p><p>“I think so, yeah. If it’s kill or be killed, or if someone is threatening violence… Yeah.”</p><p>“Execution?”</p><p>“Sure. I mean, think of all the money that goes into keeping prisoners in prison forever, if they’re murderers or paedophiles or whatever else. If they’re more of a danger to society than a contributor, they should be killed. If you take more than you could ever give back, maybe it’s better if you’re dead.”</p><p>“What about the disabled?” Asmodeus asked.</p><p>Aimé blinked. “Uh… I don’t… What do you mean?”</p><p>“The disabled might be considered to <em>take more</em> from society than they give back,” Asmodeus said. “You think we should kill everybody who uses a wheelchair? Everybody who is deaf or blind or mute?” There was something tight and severe in Asmodeus’ tone, and Aimé hesitated, studying his face for any clue as to what the right answer was, but as ever with Asmodeus, no right answer revealed itself.</p><p>“I feel like somewhere in this conversation,” Aimé said slowly, “I pissed you off.”</p><p>“Merely intellectual exercise, Aimé,” Asmodeus said. His shoulders relaxed, however marginally, and his lips shifted into the smallest of smiles. “But I would not deny a personal investment. So many people would cite value to society when they mean contribution to the economy.”</p><p>“You sound like Jean.”</p><p>“Sometimes,” Asmodeus allows. “I think what you will learn about Jean, Colm, and I over time, Aimé, is that much as it seems as if the opposite must be true, I am in many ways more radical than my brothers – but in some ways, they are far more extreme than I.”</p><p>A lot of the time, when Jean-Pierre talked, he talked bollocks – he didn’t usually quote in conversation, but talking to him, you were aware that he’d read (and written) a lot on one subject or another, whether it was morality, society, or freedom and liberty. He believed in it, and he knew it inside out – he could quote it if he wanted, but he knew how to make things accessible to other people, and Aimé expected he was good at giving speeches.</p><p>Asmodeus talked more quietly, more precisely, like he chose every single word to perfectly fit the situation. Aimé couldn’t imagine him giving a speech, but he knew that his words were probably still worth analysing if you wanted to know what he was on about. “What does radical mean, in this context? Violent?”</p><p>“I really am not very violent,” Asmodeus said softly. “People sometimes think it of me, to look at me, but even on the rare occasion I kill, Aimé, I do so very quickly, and with mercy. I am of the opinion that loss of life should be avoided at all costs, unless there is no other solution. There is a part of me that grieves for every living thing that dies.”</p><p>“That’s a lot of grief when you’re as old as time,” Aimé said.</p><p>He meant it as a joke, but Asmodeus didn’t laugh. He looked at Aimé a moment, displaying a kind of bland surprise, and then said, “It is,” in all seriousness. “You like my brother, Aimé?”</p><p>“Like him?” Aimé repeated. “Uh, yeah. Pretty sure I do.”</p><p>“His flaws don’t distress you?”</p><p>Again, another question that didn’t have any obvious answer. Aimé was quiet, leaning back in the big chair, swinging slightly in his place in it. “Not… distress me. He weirds me out sometimes. He’s intense about stuff I don’t expect. He seems to believe very strongly in everything he does.”</p><p>“And you?” Asmodeus asked. “What do you believe in?”</p><p>“I don’t believe in anything,” Aimé muttered. He thought of Jean-Pierre last night, half-asleep, sprawled out in Aimé’s bed with his hair spread out on Aimé’s pillow. Aimé had laid there, drunk and unable not to smile, as Jean-Pierre had sleepily recited every line of <em>la Déclaration</em>, as easily as if it was a bedtime story. “I believe in him, maybe. He seems like the sort of thing you could believe in.”</p><p>Asmodeus chuckled. “You wouldn’t be the first to say so,” he said softly.</p><p>“He said you’d scold him, last night.”</p><p>“Scold him?”</p><p>“He was quoting la Déclaration. Said if you were there, for every line he quoted of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, you’d respond with a line of, uh… I can’t remember—”</p><p>“On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship,” Asmodeus supplied, looking fond. “Condorcet’s answer to the National Assembly.”</p><p>“What, you think Jean’s a misogynist?”</p><p>“I don’t,” Asmodeus said. “Jean is, in every aspect, an idealist. Idealism makes one single-minded, that’s all.”</p><p>“You’re not an idealist?”</p><p>“I am an optimist,” Asmodeus said. “We don’t make such keen visionaries as idealists.” Loosely steepling his fingers in his hands, he glanced to the window, which was spattered with falling rain. “You know, Aimé, it is a fact of life that we are, each of us, forged by the times into which we are born. Neither Jean nor Colm were born, but they were made, and shaped, by the times they fell into. Jean and Colm first came into this world, each of them, to impoverished areas with a strong sense of community. They knew what it was to go hungry, and to see loved ones go hungry – and that has made them very emphatic. You have never been hungry. You do not feel so keenly what they do.”</p><p>Aimé pressed his lips together, and he crossed his arms very loosely over his chest, squeezing them for a moment and huddling in the fabric of his shirt. “They don’t live in poverty now, though. And besides, there’s no sense in bringing personal feeling into every debate. You can’t have a logical discussion with somebody if all they can cite is personal experience instead of actual fact.”</p><p>“Logic has never been Jean’s favourite weapon,” Asmodeus murmured.</p><p>“I get that you three are fucking communists,” Aimé said. “But it’s different for you three than it is for humans. Mundie or magical, we haven’t got unlimited money to throw around, and we can’t just hand out free money to anybody who looks sad. And even if we did, it wouldn’t fix everything.”</p><p>Asmodeus inhaled, and then he stood to his feet. Aimé watched him as he unbuttoned his cardigan, hanging it very neatly on the hook on the back of the door, and then laid back on the bed, setting his hands over his belly and laying his head on the pillow, like some male, Middle Eastern parody of Morticia Addams – and, admittedly, just as hot.</p><p>“May I ask you a question?” Asmodeus asked. He had closed his eyes, and Aimé hesitated for a second, wondering where this was going – surely, the guy wasn’t going to just fall asleep?</p><p>“Sure.”</p><p>“What makes a murder, in your eyes?”</p><p>“Uh… Legally?”</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said. “If you thought murder should be wrong only as a result of its legality, you would not distinguish between murder, execution, and euthanasia. What makes it wrong, to take the life of another human being?”</p><p>“It… It’s just wrong,” Aimé said. “If we let people kill each other for no reason, society would crumble.”</p><p>“In an anarchist state, you would kill someone, then?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“What if they were violent? Cruel? Selfish?” Asmodeus’ lips were not smiling, but his eyebrows were slightly raised. He sounded curious, interested, as though this was the sort of conversation people had all the time, as if he was doing nothing more innocuous than asking Aimé’s favourite colour.</p><p>“I… No. I don’t think so.” He thought about the question, pressing his fingers against his knees. “I’ve written essays on euthanasia for an ethics modules – in that case, I think it could be justified if the person has asked for it, if they can’t help themselves otherwise, or if they have a DNR and they’re in a coma, or… or whatever else. But to kill someone randomly, it’s, I don’t know. Life is something that, so far as we know it, is finite. It’s something inordinately and impossibly precious, and for humans – or fae, or angels, or anybody else – we live life as sapient, complex individuals. We love, we use tools, we cook, we philosophise. We’re separate from animals because of that – and because of that, too, to accept senseless loss of life would be opposed to the natural instinct of our species.”</p><p>He realised how long he’d been talking once he came to a stop, and he felt his cheeks flush slightly as he watched Asmodeus’ lips curved into a slight smile. His eyes opened, their green colour shining in the light, and looked at Aimé’s face.</p><p>“You are a student of philosophy,” Asmodeus said quietly.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé muttered. “Sorry. TL;DR, taking the life of a sentient being is wrong.”</p><p>“Curious words from a man who’s tried to kill himself – multiple times, if one argues for the inclusion of drugs, alcohol, and dangerous boxing practices.”</p><p>Aimé furrowed his brow slightly. “Jean tell you about that?”</p><p>“About the suicide attempt?”</p><p>“No, not that – you can see my wrists as well as anyone else can. The boxing thing.”</p><p>“The scars are visible on your face, Aimé, and you were never a professional boxer,” Asmodeus said quietly. “Even at that level, I can’t imagine an opponent would be permitted to do quite so much damage to your face.”</p><p>“I took a year out before university,” Aimé said quietly, drawing a circle on the leather of the armrest with his thumb, “and I worked on my grandmother’s vineyard. I wanted to stay, but my dad insisted I had to get a degree first, so I did a year in law, and couldn’t hack it, so I transferred, started a degree in finance. Got back into boxing then, but a lot of the clubs had rules against heavy drinking – and coke. So I started getting into some stuff in Belfast, and back here in Dublin, when I was home.”</p><p>“There’s something cathartic about getting the everloving shit kicked out of you, isn’t there?”</p><p>Aimé laughed. It sounded stupid, in Aimé’s posh, English accent, but he nodded his head, and Asmodeus smiled at him, then closed his eyes again.</p><p>“They’re home from Mass,” he said mildly. “Tell James he can come straight up.”</p><p>Aimé looked out of the window, and he watched Colm and Jean-Pierre both get out of the car. Jimmy, the priest, got out of the back of the car too, and Aimé felt a weird, twisted sensation in his belly when he saw him.</p><p>He had a small suitcase in his hand, and he was dressed not in a black shirt, but in a dark green one, and a blue jumper.</p><p>“He’s leaving the priesthood?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Asmodeus kept his eyes closed, and smiled, showing his teeth. “Would you like to know something about me, Aimé?”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“I hate the church,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“That’s not news to me.”</p><p>“Perhaps not,” was the response. “But I like to say it from time to time.”</p><p>Aimé had a headache, and when he went downstairs, he bundled Jean-Pierre into his arms immediately, because the angel was in a foul mood, and it showed. He collapsed against Aimé’s chest, insisted on being carried into the living room, and when Aimé sank back onto the sofa, Jean curled up in his lap, and said nothing as Aimé picked up his Plato and his wine once again.</p><p>“Read to me,” Jean said.</p><p>“From where I was reading?”</p><p>“From the beginning.”</p><p>“You’re fucking spoilt, you know that?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre looked at him, his blue eyes shining. “Are you going to spoil me, or not?”</p><p>Aimé shifted the book in his hand, and Jean-Pierre watched, visibly satisfied, as he paged back to the beginning.</p><p>“Merci,” Jean-Pierre whispered, and Aimé felt the heat of the angel against his chest as he began to read.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Old Wine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>They were sitting just inside the green house.</p><p>Colm had installed heavy sun lamps so that he could continue to grow his vegetables through the long winter, although he’d have to pollinate everything by hand, but that had never bothered him. Between Colm’s complicated system of artificial heat and light, and Jean-Pierre’s own carefully inscribed runes at the base of the greenhouse glass panes and into the concrete slabs that made up its inner path, the greenhouse would be a veritable stronghold of heat and light, even in the depths of a freezing February.</p><p>What it meant now, of course, was that Jean was sprawled out on in one of their lounge chairs with one of the heat lamps on, basking in the heat of it like a snake. Aimé had made a few sketches of him, but he’d been surreptitious about it, so Jean-Pierre hadn’t commented.</p><p>He’d been sat with Colm and Asmodeus earlier, but when Asmodeus had shared a cigarette with the ex-priest in their midst (he’d begged off when Jean-Pierre had glared at him, had said, “It’s only one, Jean,” very plaintively, “and I won’t be here for much longer…”), Aimé had caught a whiff of the smoke and coughed, hovering for a second with his hand over his mouth.</p><p>Then, he’d come to sit with Jean-Pierre, which was only right.</p><p> “It pisses you off,” Aimé said. “Colm too.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre opened his eyes, and he looked through his eyelashes at Aimé in the chair beside him. Aimé had dragged over one of the proper chairs with a hard back to sit in, and read by the light of the greenhouse’s sun lamp. Jean-Pierre had twisted to put his feet in Aimé’s lap, and Aimé had responded by unlacing his shoes and setting them aside, and had been idly stroking Jean-Pierre’s ankles while reading his book.</p><p>Glancing to Colm, Jean-Pierre could see the stiffness in his brother’s spine, the tightness to his mouth, but the ex-priest looked almost at ease for the first time since Jean-Pierre had met him.</p><p>There were still circles under his eyes, and grey in his hair, but he was smiling, albeit distantly.</p><p>“He does this,” Jean-Pierre murmured, idly curling a lock of hair around his fingers. “Seduces priests. It is not always a physical seduction that he mounts. He says… He said to me once if it is God’s will that man should act freely, according to his own desires, then it is only right that he should show some men they need not take the cloth to be free.”</p><p>“What the fuck does that mean?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre huffed out a sharp sound, not pleasant enough in his own ears to be laughter.</p><p>“Asmodeus finds priests with doubts, and puts his finger upon the scale,” he explained quietly. “When they tip the way he likes, he declares them free.”</p><p>“He doesn’t force them, though,” Aimé said slowly. “Just… What, tempts them?”</p><p>“My brother believes very strongly that everyone on this planet should have choices,” Jean-Pierre said quietly, aware of the tension in his voice, aware of how thin his lips were as he worked to keep from actually frowning. “But as much as possible, he should prefer they make the choices he would have them make.”</p><p>“Huh,” Aimé said.</p><p>“<em>Huh</em>?”</p><p>Aimé was smirking down at Jean-Pierre’s feet, and gently squeezed his ankle. “You two are birds of a feather, that’s all. You both think people are perfectly free to do whatever <em>you</em> want them to.”</p><p>“Écrase,” Jean-Pierre muttered, and Aimé laughed. The bright light caught the shine of his curls, showed the scattered paint flecks staining his hair, every small piece of stubble on his face, the shine of his eyes.</p><p>“D’accord, mon ange,” Aimé murmured as he stood slowly to his feet, hooking one hand under Jean-Pierre’s ankles and tilting them back onto his own chair. He set them down gently, as though Jean-Pierre were something fragile, something he was concerned about breaking. As he held up his own empty wine glass, Jean-Pierre felt his heart swell in his chest. “Je t’offre un verre?”</p><p>“Ouais, mais pas—”</p><p>“Pas du vin, j’sais,” Aimé interrupted him, a fond grin on his lopsided face. “Jus d’ananas?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre tugged Aimé down first by the hem of his shirt, until Aimé tilted down to meet him. When they kissed, Aimé’s mouth tasted of Bordeaux, and it really wasn’t all that bad.</p><p>There was something about being addressed in his own tongue that was unspeakably intimate – being angels, all spoken language should be the same to them, for it was all understandable. But for certain slang, and words that were either very old or very new, most language was the same in his ears – and yet, even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true.</p><p>The meaning was the same, but what language in all the world compared to the voice of the Republic that had borne him? What language could bring him so much comfort as that?</p><p>Aimé spoke with a southerner’s accent, said tarpin instead of très, and there was something sweet about it, something genuine and very real, as though Aimé stripped off a layer of his own armour to speak to Jean-Pierre in French.</p><p>“I’ll take that as a yes,” Aimé murmured against Jean-Pierre’s mouth, and when Jean-Pierre cupped Aimé’s face, stroking his thumb through the hard scruff of his stubble, Aimé’s gaze softened slightly, and his lips curved into more of a smile.</p><p>“Do you despise me?” Jean-Pierre asked softly.</p><p>“Someone should,” Aimé murmured, tilting his head and musing on the question before he met Jean-Pierre’s gaze again. “But it couldn’t be me.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre sighed, and laid back in his chair, basking in the heat of the lamp as Aimé walked back into the house. Asmodeus met his gaze, and arched one eyebrow.</p><p>Jean-Pierre closed his eyes, and ignored it.</p><p>He must have fallen asleep, basking under the green house lamp, because when he was next aware of anything, his legs were wrapped loosely around Asmodeus’ waist and Asmodeus had slung Jean-Pierre’s arms around his shoulders, and was carrying him into the house. Jean-Pierre grunted, shifting slightly and pressing his face more into the warmth of Asmodeus’ neck.</p><p>He stayed limp, however, and when Asmodeus brought him into the main room, he didn’t lay Jean-Pierre down on any of the chairs, but sank down beside the fire, letting Jean-Pierre settle in his lap.</p><p>“I could have gotten him,” Aimé said. “He’s not heavy.”</p><p>“Or you could have just turned the light off and left him out there,” said Colm dryly. “Serve him right.”</p><p>“Easy for you to say,” Aimé said. “Would he have come crawling inside crying about being cold and jump, freezing, into <em>your</em> lap?”</p><p>“If he couldn’t find one of you two? Probably.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, and so did the ex-priest and Asmodeus. This close, Asmodeus’ laugh was rich and resonant, thrummed through Jean-Pierre’s chest, and Jean-Pierre felt himself relax more against Asmodeus’ chest as he felt the fire behind him lick at his back, keeping his eyes closed.</p><p>“Have you been to vineyards in Tuscany?”  asked the ex-priest in the voice of one continuing a conversation, and Jean-Pierre heard the glug and trickle of wine into a glass, smelt its acidic tang on the air.</p><p>“No,” Aimé said. “I spent the whole time in Montauban working on our vineyard – I didn’t travel anywhere, but I read books about wine, and I talked about wine with my family. Tuscan soil quality is typically pretty poor – they have a lot of vineyards, and a lot of their land is devoted to viticulture, but the actual yield from the vine isn’t great.”</p><p>“Funny,” said the ex-priest. “I’ve never heard anyone talk like you about wine.”</p><p>“Like a labourer, you mean, instead of a sommelier?” Aimé asked dryly.</p><p>“You sound like you miss it,” said Colm.</p><p>“I do,” Aimé said, after a not insignificant pause. “But our vineyard’s gone, now. Been sold on, the land split up,,, They’re building holiday villas there.”</p><p>“You could go back to it here,” Colm said, in his typical fashion, voice dripping with empathy, and perhaps Jean-Pierre shouldn’t have felt quite so triumphant when Aimé responded with scarcely disguised ire.</p><p>“Uh huh,” he said. “Great land for grapes in Ireland, so. There are a handful of plants that’d be hardy enough to live out the winters here, but Christ, with how wet it is… It’s a delicate process, growing grapes for wine. The taste is concentrated as you deprive the plant of water. There’d be no sense in trying it in Ireland unless you were going to do almost all of it artificially, and what’s the point in that?”</p><p>“Spoken like a man who’s thought about it in depth,” rumbled Asmodeus, and Aimé went quiet.</p><p>“Is that where you’re going to go?” asked Colm, after the silence had gone on for long enough. “Italy?”</p><p>“No,” said the ex-priest. “No, I’m going to, ah… I’m going to go to America.”</p><p>“Family there?” asked Colm.</p><p>“I don’t have family anywhere,” was the immediate response. “But you knew that.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt his lip twitch, and he felt the shift in the room as Colm took that in. Probably leaned back on his feet – Colm was standing where the others were sitting down – and took a sip of his drink, probably gave the ex-priest a particular stare.</p><p>“Could be that your mother’s still alive,” said Colm. “Have you tried to look?”</p><p>“I tried,” was the response, low and quiet. “These past months, I’ve tried. I’ve made requests, filled in all the right forms. Information is, as is typical, not forthcoming.”</p><p>There was a deep and uncomfortable tension in the room, and Jean-Pierre curled further into Asmodeus’ chest, tugging at the loose part of his shirt hem and curling it around his fingers. Aimé turned to glance at him, and when Jean-Pierre met his gaze, Aimé held up a tall glass full of orange liquid, a green cocktail umbrella resting on its rim.</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled at him, albeit thinly, and smiled when Asmodeus reached out to take it for him, gently setting it into Jean-Pierre’s own hand.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Colm said.</p><p>“Me too,” said the ex-priest. “But, as your brother has pointed out to me these past few weeks, I’ve been part of it. I don’t really have the right to be surprised or disappointed.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shifted in Asmodeus’ lap, and he watched the way Colm stiffened, watched the way his lip curled, although he tried his best not to make his indignation too obvious. The bitterness in the ex-priest’s voice was palpable.</p><p>“That’s not—” Colm started.</p><p>To Jean-Pierre’s surprise, it wasn’t Asmodeus who interrupted, but Aimé.</p><p>“I know this is a tough subject,” he said, “but, Christ, Colm, I think Jimmy has the right to take it more personally than you do. We’re all Catholics here, but none of us has been hit with it like he has.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre studied his brother’s face as he regarded Aimé, his lips parting in surprise, and despite his anger – and he was angry, Jean-Pierre knew, and protective, wished to speak on behalf of the church if no one else would – Colm smiled at Aimé, looked surprised, and delighted.</p><p>“Alright,” Colm said, and sauntered to the fridge to get another beer.</p><p>Even Aimé looked surprised at the ease of that particular battle, and Jean-Pierre took a sip of his pineapple juice, felt its acidity on his tongue, swallowed. Asmodeus’ fingers had begun stroking slow, methodical lines up and down the line of Jean-Pierre’s spine, rubbing over his shoulders between every third or fourth beat in the rhythm.</p><p>“How is school?” asked the ex-priest. He was looking at Jean-Pierre, and there was a desperation, a sort of keen adherence to a faith apparently fading, writ in his face. He craned to the edge of his seat, hunched over the glass of wine in his hands.</p><p>“I have missed the rhythm of university. It has been a long time since I last attended. There is a sort of youthful fierceness in every other student, even the other mature students. There is something about higher education that imparts in one the fervent belief that one can change the world.”</p><p>Aimé released a snort of sound, condescending, before he took a sip of his wine.</p><p>It was an old <em>old</em> wine, Jean saw now – at least two or three hundred years old and out of Asmodeus’ more secreted collection, having been sealed with emery. Those very old wines he didn’t often share, but he shared the bottle now, with Byrne and with Aimé.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was as pleased as he was irritated by the fact.</p><p>“I felt that way when I attended university,” Byrne said quietly. “I studied abroad in Rome, for my Erasmus, and… It felt like things were changing for the church. That things might change.”</p><p>“Which parts did you think needed changing?” asked Colm, his voice very hard.</p><p>“More than what was changed,” said Byrne, and he swallowed, and Jean-Pierre watched the wince that came after in his brother’s face. He wondered what sort of pain Byrne was broadcasting, for Colm to wince like that.</p><p>Asmodeus felt it too, Jean-Pierre supposed, because Asmodeus’ hand curved around his waist, and squeezed: his lips were pursed, and his gaze was far away. Jean-Pierre thought about the monk in Thessaloniki, the one De had made kill himself.</p><p>“When I Fell,” Jean-Pierre said, “it was to a small town many miles outside of Paris, near Chartres. My family were very poor – we farmed wheat. We subsided on very little, shared what we had to eat – the rare meat we got, it was of pigeons, local birds. My lover, Jules, he couldn’t bear to kill them: it was always his mother who broke their necks, or me. And for all that work, that effort, we gave most of the meat to the dog.”</p><p>Byrne was looking at him as though he was frightened of what Jean-Pierre might say next, but couldn’t bear to turn away. His lips were parted, quivering: Aimé watched him too, but seemed bewitched. In their way, Jean-Pierre supposed, they were both of them enraptured.</p><p>“I could scarcely believe it, living so modestly as we did,” Jean-Pierre said, “the first time I stepped foot inside the church. Its beauty and its splendour took my breath away: such fine fabrics Father Aubuchon wore, such fine silver and gold was made and stood upon the altar. Such richesse created in praise to God – and yet still I could not reckon with it. What did God care of fine things in His temple when the worshipers within were starving? In the Revolution, James, I never killed a priest, but my brothers killed them, and I watched. They did not care for their community except for that which they could leech from them – they grew fat on the blood of starving Christian children, and wore jewels in their parody of devotion while their congregations wore only rags. But the Church stands for more than these men did.”</p><p>“Tell that to the Vatican,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“There is need of further reform,” Jean-Pierre said. “I would not deny it. There are injustices still that need be corrected. I believe you might correct them better from within than without.”</p><p>“I thought so too,” Byrne said quietly. “For a few years.”</p><p>“And now?” Colm asked. “What will you do now?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Byrne. “I… I have never really had a holiday. I’ve abandoned my vocation: my life is distressingly blank.”</p><p>“Would you like to go back?” asked Asmodeus softly, gently even. “You still can.”</p><p>Byrne – James – smiled. “No,” he said quietly. He looked younger, when he smiled. “No, I think I’ve made the right decision.”</p><p>Aimé stood to his feet, and Jean-Pierre watched him as he drained the dregs of wine left in his glass, setting it down on the table again. He didn’t ask before leaning forward, hooking one arm around Jean-Pierre’s waist and lifting him out of Asmodeus’ lap: De caught Jean-Pierre’s glass before he could spill it, and Jean-Pierre laughed as Aimé threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, carrying him easily.</p><p>He was tipsy, but not drunk, and he was steady as he carried Jean-Pierre up the stairs, toward the bedroom, and laid him gently down on the bed. Jean-Pierre laid in place and let Aimé undress him, let him push De’s cardigan off of Jean-Pierre’s shoulders, let him unlace his blouse and slide that free, too, and unfasten his trousers.</p><p>Once Jean-Pierre was undressed, Aimé began to undress himself, and Jean-Pierre laid back on his pillows and watched him fold his clothes and put them aside, watched him turn down the lamp, pour water from the jug on for each of them.</p><p>“How long was I asleep?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“A few hours,” Aimé said, sliding onto the bed between Jean-Pierre’s legs, curling his arms around Jean-Pierre’s thighs and laying his chin on Jean-Pierre’s belly.</p><p>“You were talking with him for some time, then,” Jean-Pierre said. “Byrne.”</p><p>“I didn’t know he was born in a laundry,” Aimé said in a low voice. “Colm smacked me in the head earlier ‘cause I made a joke about paedo priests. Thought he meant ‘cause Jimmy <em>was</em> a priest until he told me that. I don’t get how Colm can feel what people are feeling and still defend it.”</p><p>“My brother’s empathy does not simplify his feelings: it complicates them.”</p><p>“Are you guys pro-life?” Aimé asked. “Anti-abortion?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook his head. “Colm used to be. He believes very strongly in the sanctity of young life – but in the late 1800s I made him assist in my surgery. I was known in various underground circles, it was known that I was safe, in a way other male doctors were not.</p><p>“There were abortifacients. Poisons, most of them, to be taken orally, but there were douches, too, hot baths, alcohol. Induced miscarriages – the right fall down the stairs, the right blow to the belly. And the surgery, it was…” He sighed, and he curled his fingers in Aimé’s hair, tugging him slowly up toward him, until Aimé was laid on Jean-Pierre’s breast, a heavy, beautiful weight. “It was distressing, even as a medical professional. Colm shrank away from some of his more absolute views seeing what desperate lengths these people would go to ensure they did not have another hungry mouth to feed.”</p><p>“I don’t get it,” Aimé murmured, and Jean-Pierre wound locks of Aimé’s hair around and around his fingers, watching him. “You can’t have kids, right?”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “I bear no eggs – no angel does. We can neither be fertilised or fertilise others. There are rumours, of course, as to accursed Nephilim, but I have never seen such things prove to be true. There have been few studies into such things, but I do not believe even an angel acting surrogate would confer any of their facets upon the child they carried.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“I do not know,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “This bothers you? You thought to impregnate me, have me bear your children?”</p><p>Aimé recoiled with such horror writ on his face that Jean-Pierre laughed, and at Jean-Pierre’s amusement, some of his disgust faded, and he gave a slow shake of his head.</p><p>“No, I don’t… I don’t want that. Just— You’re a Catholic.”</p><p>“You’ve noticed?”</p><p>“But you’re pro-abortion,” Aimé said.</p><p>“I am not,” Jean-Pierre said. He hooked one of his legs loosely over Aimé’s shoulder, pressing his heel between his shoulders and watching the sigh that left Aimé’s throat. “I believe in the sanctity of life. But tell me, Aimé: a woman comes to you with an infant in her arms, already starving, and another grows in her womb. She already struggles to feed herself, the child she has – how could she bear with another? How sacred is life, if we bring it into being only to snuff it slowly, painfully out again? I am a Catholic – but I am a doctor, too, and more than that, I can feel for myself what is just.”</p><p>Aimé was sleepy, tipsy as he was, and he wrapped one hand loosely around Jean-Pierre’s thigh, pressing on the flesh and tapping his fingers against the muscle there, but this was not to say he wasn’t listening. Aimé was listening keenly, his brow furrowed, his lips pressed together.</p><p>“You think Mass should be in Latin.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“All Mass?”</p><p>“You wish to know if I would ban Mass in English, or Irish?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre said. “Mass in the common language makes a congregation feel closer to God – it strikes me as right, therefore, that one should have the right to commune with God in the language of one’s choosing.”</p><p>“Why not <em>commune with God</em>,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre tightened his grip on Aimé’s hair at the mockery in his tone, making him let out a hissed noise that wasn’t altogether a sound of pain, “in French, then?”</p><p>“Because Mass should be conducted in Latin.”</p><p>Aimé groaned, and then he laughed, pressing his nose against the crease of Jean-Pierre’s thigh. “What I’m trying to ask,” Aimé said slowly, “is how you can be three hundred years old, see the church change, believe that parts of the church <em>should</em> change, <em>won’t</em> change, and still be a Catholic. Doesn’t it drive you crazy?”</p><p>“Sometimes. Parts of the church are very corrupt, cold, calculating – they profit off the alms that ought be given to the poor. But I have faith in God – and faith in man. Many of the programs Colm and I volunteer with, you might notice, are organised through the church.”</p><p>“Only ‘cause you might convert people in the process.”</p><p>“What is wrong with that?” Jean-Pierre asked, arching one eyebrow. “One is saved, one is grateful – one puts one’s faith in God. I fail to see what could be more natural than that.”</p><p>Aimé shook his head, rubbing his chin against the base of Jean-Pierre’s belly and making him shiver, but he didn’t duck his head just yet, instead looking thoughtful again, despite the fact that he seemed unconvinced by what Jean had said a moment ago.</p><p>“He smiled when I told him to shut up,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Colm?”</p><p>He nodded.</p><p>“He was surprised to see you defend something,” Jean-Pierre said. “To believe in something.”</p><p>“I don’t believe in anything,” Aimé said. “But it’s fucked up to talk to a guy like he’s not the expert on priests when he <em>was</em> a priest, and might have gotten abused by them.” Aimé was quiet for a moment, pressing his elbows into the sides of Jean-Pierre’s torso, and Jean-Pierre studied his face, the expression on it, the hesitation. He met Jean-Pierre’s gaze, then, opened his mouth, closed it. “Can I ask you something?”</p><p>“You have been asking me a great many somethings already.”</p><p>“That a no?”</p><p>“I believe you know it is not.”</p><p>“You said you didn’t kill anybody in the Revolution,” Aimé said slowly, his gaze somewhere distant, “but that you watched people die.”</p><p>That was not, in fact, what Jean-Pierre had said. He did not point this out. “That is a question?”</p><p>“Asmodeus said he’d killed people before, earlier. He said it so casually, but I just… I don’t know. I don’t think I could ever kill someone.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled slightly, stroked his hand over Aimé’s cheek, and wondered how long it would take to change that. More than one night, certainly, which is why he would not tonight ask the question – but merely that Aimé had asked <em>so many</em> questions, had shown <em>such</em> interest… It was a good sign, Jean-Pierre thought.</p><p>“Will you kiss me?” he asked.</p><p>“I taste of wine,” Aimé said.</p><p>“I taste of pineapple,” Jean-Pierre replied, and sighed into Aimé’s mouth when Aimé crawled up and kissed him.</p><p>When he bit Aimé’s lip – hard enough, this time, to draw blood – Aimé moaned, thrusting up against Jean-Pierre. He was a natural masochist, that much was true, but when Jean-Pierre pulled back, Aimé’s blood staining his mouth, Aimé looked at him with terror in his eyes, and spread his legs apart like it was instinct.</p><p>“Do you have lectures tomorrow?” Jean-Pierre asked softly.</p><p>“Uh huh.”</p><p>“You won’t be sitting down for them,” Jean-Pierre promised, and swallowed Aimé’s shuddered moan in another kiss.</p><p> *     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>His lectures were dull that day, and made his head fuzz – he’d had a few lecturers in a row without much charisma, and it had wrecked his head trying to concentrate on anything any of them were saying, even to read what was written (in full fucking paragraphs) on the projected slides. The bruises on his arse, let alone his sensitive cock, which Jean-Pierre had wrung all but dry, didn’t actually bother him that much – in fact, Aimé was fairly certain it was the only thing taking the edge off his messed up head, the only thing keeping him halfway grounded, and he was grateful for it.</p><p>He couldn’t paint, not with his head like this, so he made his way to the angels’ house, and was surprised to find that Jean-Pierre and Colm weren’t home.</p><p>“Are they out doing music?” he asked Asmodeus quietly.</p><p>Jimmy had fallen asleep in the chair beside the fire, and Asmodeus was cooking, finely slicing vegetables into discs. There was a cat in his lap, and Aimé vaguely recognised it as belonging to one of the old people across the street – it was purring softly, and Jimmy’s hand sunk right into its fur. The cat was ancient, ginger, and had mats in its thick fur, but it always wound its way around Colm’s ankles, from what Aimé had seen, and it actually seemed to like Aimé, not that he really knew much about cats – or about any animals, really.</p><p>“Start the aubergines,” Asmodeus said as he sliced potatoes into thin discs, making another chopping board and a knife slide out from one of the flat drawers, and obediently, Aimé went to wash his hands. “No, they got called out on a job.”</p><p>“A job?” Aimé repeated. “What, something medical?”</p><p>“Colm and Jean have other responsibilities,” Asmodeus said cryptically. “A few friends required assistance in Brazil. Finer than that, Aimé.”</p><p>Aimé hesitated, glancing at the discs of aubergine he’d cut already and looking to Asmodeus’ potatoes, and after a moment’s pause, he started cutting more pieces, doing them as fine as he could. Asmodeus didn’t look quite satisfied, but he did nod his head, and Aimé kept cutting the aubergines into the thinnest discs he could manage as De quickly moved through potatoes, and then started on some squash.</p><p>“What are we cooking?”</p><p>“Ratatouille,” Asmodeus said. “Jean enjoys when I cook it like a cartoon he likes.”</p><p>Aimé looked at the many discs of potato and squash, each of them heaped up in a bowl each. “<em>Ratatouille</em> isn’t a cartoon, it’s an animated movie.”</p><p>“I fail to see a distinction.”</p><p>“You’ve never seen it?”</p><p>“I’ve seen the titular dish.” Asmodeus worked quickly with a knife, and by the time Aimé had finished one aubergine, it seemed like he’d filled a whole new bowl with finely chopped vegetables. He stirred a pot of thick, red sauce that smelled of basil and garlic before returning to his work, now beginning to render courgettes very quickly into discs. “I don’t typically take in cinema. Occasionally, I will watch a romantic comedy.”</p><p>“You prefer <em>Notting Hill, </em>or <em>Love Actually</em>?”</p><p>Asmodeus looked at him, his green eyes showing no recognition at all, his expression blank. “<em>Roman Holiday</em>,” he said.</p><p>Aimé huffed out a laugh, and concentrated on his aubergines, listening the regular rhythm of Asmodeus’ knife on the wood board. He’d miss De’s dry humour, he thought, when he was gone – Jean-Pierre said he’d be gone for months, that he’d be helping newly Fallen angels, that he wouldn’t be home ‘til Christmas.</p><p>He’d been stiff about it, and he’d changed the subject very quickly.</p><p>“I noticed you were limping this morning,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“I noticed too,” Aimé said, and he watched Asmodeus’ lips curve into a small, wry smile. “Where’s Jimmy get the cat?”</p><p>“Oh, Peadar? He just wandered in – I left the door open when I went out to pick some vegetables from the greenhouse. I expect he was disappointed he didn’t come in to find Colm, but James is evidently proving an adequate substitute.”</p><p>“Colm always stops to pet cats,” Aimé said, trying to go faster as he chopped, but he only ended up cutting the vegetables unevenly, and earned a stern look for his troubles. “Jean-Pierre doesn’t.”</p><p>“Oh, Jean likes animals,” Asmodeus said idly. “Especially dogs. He’s just fussy about his clothes, that’s all, and his instinct is to let them clamber all over him once he’s stopped to greet them or pet their fur – he really can’t resist, once he gets too close. He doesn’t love by halves.”</p><p>Aimé swept his clumsily chopped discs into the bowl Asmodeus held out for him, and then leaned on the counter to watch as De spread some of the ratatouille sauce through the middle of a huge, circular oven dish, working smoothly.</p><p>“You know, that movie only came out a few years ago, what, in 2005? You’re making this like you’ve made it a lot of times.”</p><p>“Dozens,” Asmodeus said. “It came out in ’07 – Jean didn’t see it until ’09.”</p><p>“You really love him, huh,” Aimé said. “And Colm, too.”</p><p>The idea made him ache, somehow. He couldn’t even imagine what that was like, couldn’t even <em>fathom</em> it, loving someone enough to make a fucking meal from a movie for them, and yet he couldn’t help but be aware he was watching every movement of Asmodeus’ hands, committing them to memory, taking note of how many discs he had of each vegetable, how full the bowls were, already had the question burning on his tongue of what Asmodeus had put in the sauce.</p><p>“Very much, I do,” Asmodeus said. “It has been said a great many times that I spoil my brothers, Aimé, and I often do. It is the right of any older sibling to dote on his brothers and sisters, I think, if he so chooses.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t know.”</p><p>“Perhaps not,” Asmodeus allowed. His fingers were impossibly deft as he began to layer discs of vegetables in the wide pan, creating a brightly coloured spiral effect as he worked. For how big Asmodeus’ hands were, it was amazing to see how dexterous they were, how delicately he could work – if Aimé tried what he was doing, he’d fuck it up in an instant, and smear all his beautiful work. “Something’s worrying you?”</p><p>“Just having a bad day for concentrating, that’s all,” Aimé mumbled. “I’d normally smoke a fag, but, uh. I can’t. Jean-Pierre is going to do a scratch test on me later in the week for allergies.”</p><p>“No closer to ascertaining the cause, hm?”</p><p>“Do you know?”</p><p>Asmodeus huffed a low laugh. “Contrary to what my brothers often seem to think, Aimé, I don’t know everything.”</p><p>“De.”</p><p>Asmodeus turned his head very slowly to look at Aimé, and Aimé worried for a moment that he was offended at the use of the nickname, but he didn’t seem offended at all. He stood there, wearing a neat little black apron over his white shirt, his hands held in front of him as though he were midway through surgery – on the handsome skin of his hands, Aimé noticed, he didn’t have even the barest stain of red sauce.</p><p>“I really… I really like your brother,” Aimé said, aware of the way his voice cracked. “I’m not used to that. And he keeps talking about all these fucking dead guys, and they’re— I don’t know anything about them, but I doubt any of them were fuck-ups like me. And I’m trusting you to tell me here, because I know if I ask him, he’ll just make up some bullshit, but what the fuck does he <em>see</em> in me? How can he want… <em>this</em>?”</p><p>He gestured at himself, and he realised all at once that he was far too sober, which was probably why he was being such a little bitch all of a sudden. His eyes were stinging, and he crossed the room, finding his vodka in Jean-Pierre’s cupboard and beginning to pour himself a measure.</p><p>Casually, as though Aimé hadn’t walked away, Asmodeus said, “I don’t think he sees anything in you, Aimé, except you – and, perhaps, the few gaps he might fill with himself.”</p><p>“Your brother always been this fucking crazy?”</p><p>“He’s had his ups and downs,” Asmodeus said, and Aimé didn’t look at him as he knocked back some of the bottle, then poured a few more measures into a glass. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Aimé, but I hardly think you’re concerned about Jean spouting any of his bollocks if you ask him what he sees in you. I expect you’re worried he might be too honest.”</p><p>“What happened to not knowing everything?”</p><p>“I know enough to get by.”</p><p>Aimé turned to look at Asmodeus, who gestured for him to come closer. “Help me,” he said softly. “We’ll be done faster with two of us.”</p><p>“I’ll fuck it up.”</p><p>“It’s stewed vegetables, Aimé. You can’t fuck it up.”</p><p>“And Jean? What about him?”</p><p>Asmodeus looked at Aimé very seriously, and Aimé watched as he wiped his hands off on a dishcloth, and then reached out. He took the glass of out of Aimé’s hand, setting it down on the counter, and then he pulled Aimé toward him, tilting Aimé’s head up to look at him.</p><p>It was terrifying, somehow, or at least, it should have been terrifying, but Aimé got the impression – from where, he didn’t know, because it was impossible to read the angel’s expression – that Asmodeus really did <em>like</em> him, and probably wouldn’t hurt him.</p><p>“I’m going to tell you a secret now, Aimé,” Asmodeus said quietly. “I’m going to tell it to you because I like you very much, and it strikes me that you and my brother are well-suited to one another. Do you understand?”</p><p>“No,” Aimé said. Asmodeus’ lip twitched.</p><p>His voice was quiet, more delicate, as he said, smoothing down the front of Aimé’s paint-stained jumper in the process, “For all his scars, my brother appears to be quite put-together, but he is not without his injuries. You wear the signs of your damage on your wrists, in your face… Believe me when I tell you my brother is almost as broken as you are, albeit with his cracks in different places.”</p><p>“Jean isn’t broken,” Aimé said. “He’s perfect.”</p><p>“He’s riddled with bullet holes,” Asmodeus said. “Or has that escaped your notice?”</p><p>Aimé was silent for a moment, thinking about the pink scars dappling Jean-Pierre’s thighs and arms, his torso, his cheek. “He said— He said he’d gotten shot at by a firing squad.”</p><p>“A few times,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“But—”</p><p>“In any case,” Asmodeus said, turning away from him to wash his hands away, “if you are concerned with his physical scars, you’re missing the point of what I was trying to tell you.”</p><p>“No,” Aimé muttered, although he felt hot and cold with it, and felt like he might be sick, “I think I get it.”</p><p>“Good,” Asmodeus said. “Wash your hands, then, and let us to this ratatouille before our soldiers return from war.”</p><p>Aimé had no idea what that last bit meant.</p><p>When he woke up on the sofa a few hours later, Peadar the cat purring merrily away on his chest, Jean-Pierre was standing over him, towelling off his wet hair. Aimé looked up at him blearily, his mouth dry and half full of cat hair.</p><p>“You showered without me?”</p><p>“I didn’t wish to wake the cat,” Jean-Pierre said, smiling sweetly at him. Aimé’s gaze flitted to the scar under his eye, at the pink, shiny skin there. Had the bullet pierced right through, or had it glanced off the cheek bone? “Asmodeus said you helped him make the ratatouille. It’s in the oven now.”</p><p>“How was your job?”</p><p>“It went very well,” Jean-Pierre. “Colm and I were effective as always. Come, eat with us.”</p><p>Aimé opened his mouth, but Jean-Pierre was already walking away, and Aimé sighed, looking down at Peadar’s stupid, crushed-in face, at his crooked teeth and exaggerated overbite. Aimé felt a bit like he was looking into a mirror, and he patted his big head. “It’s a vegetarian meal, you know,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll want to join us for dinner.”</p><p>Peadar purred very loudly.</p><p>“Stupid cat,” Aimé murmured, but he smiled slightly as he pulled himself up to sit, and after dinner had been revealed, Peadar decided to make way for greener pastures where meat was on the menu.</p><p>Asmodeus and Jimmy left for the airport after dinner, and Jean-Pierre fell asleep that night with his head in Aimé’s lap, as though it were the most comfortable pillow in the world.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please remember to comment and let me know what you think!</p><p>How do you feel about the developing relationship between Aimé and Jean-Pierre? What about Aimé and Asmodeus?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Fraternity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>It was not other angels that had called them.</p><p>That was usually how it worked – an angel they’d served with, at one time or another, would give them a call, and Jean-Pierre and Colm would fill out their numbers, keep in line with old compatriots and get what needed to be done <em>done</em>.</p><p>They’d been called assassins, from time to time, but Colm hardly thought that was accurate – certainly, they killed people, but it was never really a matter of receiving a contract and taking out a hit. He knew what <em>that</em> looked like – in his time, he’d done that a few dozen times at least, but this, what he and Jean did now, this was different.</p><p>They had a reputation, and they were almost impossible to kill – and more than that, they were each experts in their own right, were tried and tested from a tactical standpoint.</p><p>Ordinarily, an angel asked for assistance with a particularly troublesome individual or organisation – Colm and Jean-Pierre would bomb the right building, kill the right people. They weren’t called on to do anyone’s work for them – it was simply that Colm and Jean-Pierre could set the dominos falling with very little risk, and make it easier for the rest of whatever wanted toppling to be toppled.</p><p>Jean might slaughter someone’s king pin as Colm slaughtered someone else’s: in the meantime, the rest of the organisation could be gutted and burned to pieces; Jean-Pierre might tear down a building’s warding so that Colm could replace their wardstones with dynamite.</p><p>Colm had never felt any guilt about it.</p><p>He hadn’t felt guilty about killing during their rebellion, hadn’t felt guilty about killing in any revolution he and Jean-Pierre had ever been involved with, nor in any war. The fact of the matter was that the best way to remove some terrible things from the world was to kill the people that wrought them – and if not the best way, it might be the fastest, the easiest, or simply the most satisfying.</p><p>And kings—</p><p>Well.</p><p>He and Jean-Pierre had each killed royals enough in their time.</p><p>Tonight, it was not an angel who’d called on them – it was an old friend of Colm’s that he’d known in Vietnam. They were fae, which meant that Jean-Pierre was uncomfortable with them (fae were far too beautiful for his liking), but Benedictine had spoken with them as they’d passed through Haiti, and had passed Colm’s number onto them in the event that they wanted help. Colm was surprised she hadn’t called them herself, but Benedictine never liked to insert herself into other people’s business.</p><p>“Beatha,” Colm said, and Beatha stood slowly from their place, reaching out to shake Colm’s hand.</p><p>“Colm,” they said quietly, and then looked past Colm to his brother. “Jean-Pierre.”</p><p>“Mr O’Callaghan,” Jean-Pierre said, unerringly polite, but he didn’t smile, and Colm resisted the urge to roll his eyes.</p><p>“We’ve been in pursuit of Prince Gwyn,” Beatha murmured. “Even in Cymru they won’t lend him sanctuary of any kind, now – he thinks to flee until he can find some land for his own, I think, and rule by his own law.”</p><p>Gwyn’s father had died some years ago, Colm knew, and the territory of his kingdom had been separated out amongst nearby kingdoms in the fae lands of Cymru – Gwyn hadn’t been able to get home to take his crown, as he’d scarce even been able to set foot in Europe in the past thirty years, because too many people knew his face, and even everywhere else, he’d been consistently on the run.</p><p>The fae lived by different rules to humans and most other magical society, that much was true, but there was the occasional fae noble who didn’t want to reckon with the fact that stepping out of the fae realms meant leaving the particular privileges of those realms behind.</p><p>Gwyn had killed far too many people’s children to expect to find peace for himself now.</p><p>Beatha had been on his trail for several months now, and did not wish, so they had told Colm, to let their hunt span into years. They would undoubtedly be given payment for their work, but Colm suspected there was something personal in their focus on it, too, particularly if they were willing to call on Colm.</p><p>But then, Gwyn left six dead mundies behind him in São Paolo, and two of them had been children of sixteen. Beatha had known he and Jean-Pierre would agree to assist on that point alone.</p><p>“Last I heard, your quarry had taken land for himself in the Pacific,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Still he flees from you?”</p><p> “I’ve killed almost all of what servants he has left, now,” Beatha said, “and he lacks the funds to hire more, but his trail is cold, and I confess I do not know how best to follow him now. I have his footman captive, but the man won’t talk – money does not sway his loyalty, nor promises of safety. He merely tells me I will not find his master.”</p><p>Beside him, Jean-Pierre tilted his head, and Colm met his brother’s gaze as Jean-Pierre looked at him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre reached for Colm, and Colm held out his hand, allowing his brother to unbutton his shirt cuffs and carefully roll his sleeves up to the elbow. He was delicate about doing it, slowly baring more of Colm’s flesh to Beatha’s gaze.</p><p>“I believe my brother can affect your footman to talk,” Jean-Pierre said, when Colm said nothing.</p><p>Beatha’s lips parted, and Colm saw the surprise in their eyes, the distant fascination.</p><p>“Very well,” they whispered, and after Jean-Pierre had rolled Colm’s sleeves up to the elbow, they lead the two of them to where they had the footman captive.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre had never had Colm’s gift for using pain to get what he wanted.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was sadistic, but his was the sadism of personal connection, of intimacy – he liked very much the depth that pain could bring to pleasure, the way the scrape of his fingernails or the catch of his teeth could affect his lovers to arch and beg for more. And in the event that he went further than that, it was not agony he reached for – he preferred the subtlety of manipulation, enjoyed the bliss of a lover confused, uncertain, relying on him for guidance.</p><p>Colm was kinder than Jean-Pierre was – he really, <em>truly</em> was a man of empathy, and empathy was the core of effective torture.</p><p>In the event Jean-Pierre wanted information, his body ordinarily sufficed as currency. Men and women alike found him beautiful, enchanting, and he could charm his way very sweetly into their considerations – people found it so easy to believe him a naïf, wide-eyed and innocent, unable to comprehend the complexities of their machinations even as they explained them to him, whether it was over drinks they had paid for, or murmured into Jean-Pierre’s ear while stroking his naked skin.</p><p>Colm was capable of charm, of course, and Jean-Pierre knew of occasions where he had proffered himself as honeypot, but this?</p><p>Oh, this was where Colm <em>truly</em> excelled. This was his artistry.</p><p>They were tears streaked on the footman’s cheeks, and he was rocking slightly in his bindings, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Oh, that does look like it hurts,” Colm said gently, sympathetically – and it was real sympathy, too, lacked the mocking edge that Jean-Pierre’s did when he was the one with the torturer’s knife in his hand. Colm hushed the footman gently, even as he delicately raised up his shaking hand, missing two fingernails, soon to be missing a third. “Are you going to make me take another one?”</p><p>“You won’t find him,” the footman sobbed, for the seventeenth or eighteenth time. It was really getting quite tiresome. “You won’t—”</p><p>“Okay,” Colm said quietly, sadly.</p><p>Three quick, subtle sweeps of the knife, and the footman was screaming again.</p><p>He broke on the fourth.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>“Take this,” Jean-Pierre said softly. He was sitting on the edge of Colm’s bath, naked, and the blood was staining every inch of skin that had been stained when they’d come upon Gwyn’s hideout – his hands looked as though he were wearing red gloves, and apart from the blood staining his hair and his face, there was more blood spattered down his chest.</p><p>Colm, he knew, had looked even worse – they’d gotten competitive about which of them would deal the killing blow, and they’d made a good deal more mess than they otherwise would have.</p><p>When they’d come to the threshold, Colm dizzy and sick from the flight, Jean-Pierre teasing him about it, Asmodeus had barked at them not to take another step, and had made them strip out of their bloody clothes before he let them go up to their bath and shower, respectively.</p><p>(The bath, Asmodeus had already run for Colm, and was steaming when he slipped into it.)</p><p>“What is it?” Colm asked, but he took the two pills Jean-Pierre offered him, and knocked them back with the glass of water. Within a few seconds, though, he felt some of the dizziness began to recede, and he whistled. “<em>Fuck</em>.”</p><p>“Good, aren’t they?” Jean-Pierre asked, giving him a smug smile. “They didn’t do much for my sea sickness, but I’ve heard they’re very effective. I’ll give you the bottle. It’s irritating, but at least they work for you.”</p><p>“My biology is different to yours,” Colm reminded him, and Jean-Pierre flicked water at his cock.</p><p>“I hadn’t noticed,” he said, and Colm laughed, flicking water back at his face. As Jean leaned back from him, Colm saw the cut on the side of his waist, and he reached to touch it. The split was already scabbed over, fresh skin growing underneath, but he didn’t remember Jean-Pierre getting cut. “From the dagger at his wrist,” Jean-Pierre supplied.</p><p>“He cut you?”</p><p>“It’s barely even a flesh wound,” Jean-Pierre said, pouting out his lips and smacking Colm’s hand away when he touched his thumb to the healing mark, and Colm grinned at him. “What?”</p><p>“You remember how we said De would have to decide who got the point?”</p><p>“I remember saying so as an act of charity to my brother,” Jean-Pierre said guardedly, furrowing his brow and looking at Colm with a twist to his mouth. “The light left the prince’s eyes before you severed his spinal cord – the killing blow was mine.”</p><p>“Even if I believed you, which, I don’t,” Colm said, “he cut you. He didn’t cut me. The point is mine.”</p><p>“Your chest is more bruise than not!”</p><p>“But he didn’t break the skin!”</p><p>Jean-Pierre let out a sharp sound, sucking his teeth, his eyes abruptly full of rage, and Colm had to hold his tongue to keep from laughing at him. “C’est de la foutaise,” he snapped, “il est—”</p><p>“What the fuck are you two doing?” Asmodeus asked from the doorway to the bathroom, and Jean-Pierre and Colm both turned to look at him. “Didn’t I tell you to bathe?”</p><p>“We’re bathing,” Colm said.</p><p>“You’re bickering,” Asmodeus said sternly, looking furious, “and congealing in the process. Jean, go get in the shower. Colm, just— <em>wash</em>. And if you don’t rinse the bath when you’re finished, I’ll drown you in it.”</p><p>Meekly – although Colm could see he was trying to hide his smirk – Jean-Pierre stood to his feet and walked out to the other bathroom, leaving Colm in his reddening bathwater.</p><p>“You’re going to have to decide which of us won the point,” Colm said as he lathered soap between his hands.</p><p>“You did,” Asmodeus said, as if it was obvious. “He got cut, you didn’t.” When Colm grinned, Asmodeus gave him a small smile in return, his hand lingering on the door handle.</p><p>“Thanks,” Colm murmured.</p><p>“You’re very welcome,” Asmodeus murmured. “Now, <em>wash</em>. Láithreach, Colm, <em>please</em>.”</p><p>“Washing, washing,” Colm said, and poured a jug of hot water over his head to wash out more of the blood. A great deal more of it was caked into his hair and onto his skin that he’d realised, and it took him some time to scrub it all off of himself, to get himself actually clean of it all.</p><p>He dried himself slowly off, towelling himself dry, and then slipped into a pair of jeans, holding his t-shirt bundled in his hand as he descended the stairs, the warm air touching over his dry skin.</p><p>Aimé was still asleep on the sofa, Peadar, the O’Malley’s ginger tom, sprawled out on top of his chest. James was setting the table, putting the plates neatly at their places, and Colm felt the depth of feeling in the room: from Aimé, a sense of warm peace, the blissful emptiness that came with sleep; from Peadar a warm and thickly-furred delight, a pleasure at being in a comfortable place with comfortable people who might give him food; from James, a sense of quiet certainty, an understanding that he was on the precipice of change, a change he was ready to explore.</p><p>“For Christ’s sake, Jean,” Colm said when Jean entered the room, and Jean looked at him as he continued to towel his hair dry, standing in the centre of the room.</p><p>“What?” he asked, tilting one head slightly to the side.</p><p>James had turned away from the table, and one of the glasses in his hands clattered on the floor.</p><p>“Put some clothes on, Jean,” Asmodeus said from the sink, without turning around. “There’s only one person in this room interested in seeing both pairs of your lips, and he’s asleep.”</p><p>“I’m drying,” Jean-Pierre said in a tone of mild complaint, but he loosely pulled a black blouse over his head, shimmying into it and letting its hem settle around his thighs. He continued to towel off his hair as he leaned over Aimé, gently pushing him to wake up.</p><p>When Colm turned to look at James, the priest’s grizzled cheeks were burning red under his stubble, and he was averting his eyes away from Jean-Pierre as though he was worried looking at him would make his eyes burn.</p><p>The humiliation was so heavy it was palpable – humiliation and desperate, burning shame for looking, for being interested, the abrupt instinct for self-flagellation. It was interesting, in a way, but it was painful too, and Colm reached out and gently touched James’ shoulder, soaked a little of that feeling up and watched some of the blush fade out of the ex-priest’s cheeks.</p><p>“He likes to be naked,” Colm said softly. “He’s not like you – he doesn’t feel your sense of shame.”</p><p>“I feel shame,” said Jean from the other side of the room, defensive, his hands braced on Aimé’s chest, having dislodged the cat to take his place.</p><p>“I can see your whole arse from here, Jean,” Colm said, “it’s self-evident that you don’t.”</p><p>Aimé started laughing even as Jean-Pierre pouted out his lips, and Aimé stood slowly where he’d been sprawled out on the couch, picking up Jean-Pierre’s jeans and holding them out to him, and Jean-Pierre refused to put them on himself, instead falling on his back and putting his legs out for Aimé to put his jeans on for him.</p><p>Aimé dragged one of Jean-Pierre’s feet up in line with his shoulder, kissing his bare angle and giving James Byrne a view that made the blush bloom again in his cheeks, and then pushed Jean-Pierre’s jeans up the length of his legs, leaning to kiss him as he pulled them up over his arse.</p><p>“I would be offended that he was doing it on purpose,” James muttered as he stood in line with Asmodeus, taking up one of Colm’s shirts from the sink – Asmodeus had scrubbed it until the stains were gone, although the water was pink, now – and tossing it into the washing machine. “But I can’t help but feel like he barely notices me.”</p><p>“He doesn’t,” Asmodeus said in a low, quiet voice that Jean-Pierre didn’t seem to hear from the other side of the room. “You’re not attracted to him, and you aren’t particularly charmed by him – therefore, in my brother’s eyes, you have all but ceased to exist.”</p><p>“You two really are brothers,” said James in a low mutter, and Colm held back his laugh as he dipped past James and pulled up the trap door in the pantry.</p><p>Asmodeus had laid Colm’s rifle – although, as Jean had predicted, he’d barely used it – and their daggers on the stone table to one side of the room, where they laid in half-encrusted pools of blood; their boots had been likewise set on one of the steps, to be cleaned later.</p><p>Colm would set to it tomorrow if Jean-Pierre didn’t – in the meantime, he stepped past and into the other half of the cellar, tugging one of Asmodeus’ wine bottles from the rack. Jean-Pierre’s still was dripping quietly into a barrel, the chemical scent of it thick on the air, and Colm tapped one of the barrels rings before he picked up a bottle of cider and climbed back up the stairs.</p><p>Peadar miaowed at him very plaintively when he stepped back into the kitchen – Asmodeus had taken his big dish out of the oven and laid it in the centre of the dining table, and Peadar’s growling sound of complaint came from low in his furry belly. Colm leaned down and gently picked the huge animal up under the arms, pulling him up against his chest and supporting his big arse with his other hand.</p><p>Peadar purred very loudly, a trilling sound, his cheek pressing against Colm’s chin, but even as he did so, he craned to look at the table, to see what everyone was eating.</p><p>“No meat here tonight, Peadar,” Colm said apologetically, rocking on his feet with the great tiger of a housecat purring in his arms. “Just ratatouille and wine.”</p><p>Peadar looked at him with his stupid yellow eyes, and released another plaintive sound.</p><p>“Mrs O’Malley is calling him for his supper, Colm,” Asmodeus said as he broke pieces of garlic bread off of the baguette. “You should put him out.”</p><p>“You can hear that?” Aimé asked, and Asmodeus nodded his head.</p><p>“So can he, I’d wager,” Asmodeus said, and at once, Peadar’s ears pricked up, and he clawed his way out of Colm’s arms, rushing to the front door with his big bushy tail up in the air. “So you see,” said Asmodeus. “The lint roller is on the table in the hall, Colm.”</p><p>Colm looked down at his chest, and then he sighed at the orange hairs covering his chest, then looked at Aimé, whose chest still had a few scattered orange hairs staining it, but had obviously been wiped mostly clean.</p><p>“Jean already did me,” Aimé said helpfully, and Colm let out a low, half-amused sound, and let the cat out.</p><p>It was almost nice, dinner. He tried to concentrate on not leaning on the ex-priest, tried not to snap at him or ask him too many questions. Asmodeus was quiet as he always was just before going away. He wanted to be quiet, wanted to soak it all in for a while, because after this, he’d be on his own for a while.</p><p>It wasn’t that Asmodeus disliked being on his own, Colm didn’t think – he just found it as difficult as anyone might, travelling back and forth, without being able to settle at home again for some time.</p><p>“Jean said you’re going to be travelling,” Aimé said. “Meeting angels.”</p><p>“I greet new angels when they Fall,” Asmodeus said. “I know they Fall, where they’ll Fall… I tell the Embassy when I know for certain, of course, but I’m usually there first.”</p><p>“To give them their starter pack?” Aimé asked, raising an eyebrow. “Welcome to Earth, enjoy your new demotion?”</p><p>Asmodeus actually laughed at that, to Colm’s surprise, releasing a low, smooth chuckle. “Something like that,” he murmured. “I help new angels register with the Embassy, choose a name, connect them with resources, shelter, if need be. Like we did with George. But you needn’t worry, Aimé. I’ll be with all of you again for Christmas.”</p><p>Perhaps it should have wounded him, that Asmodeus had hesitated to promise Colm he’d be home for Christmas, but that he told Aimé he’d be back easily – but the thing is, they were done for different reasons, Colm thought.</p><p>Asmodeus had hesitated to promise Colm in case he disappointed him.</p><p>Asmodeus was promising Aimé to get the reaction he was getting now.</p><p>Aimé’s lopsided eyes had widened, and his lips were parted in slight surprise, his head tipped back. The emotions that came off him were overwhelming for Colm, sat a few seats away, so he hardly knew how they felt for Aimé himself: bafflement, self-loathing, fear, embarrassment… Every emotion became one amorphous mass of painful feeling. Aimé felt like the rug was going to be pulled out from under him at any moment, and Colm let the emotion hang for a moment before he intervened.</p><p>“You will join us for Christmas, won’t you, Aimé?” Colm asked, and ignored the expression of sheer delight that showed on Jean-Pierre’s face. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to, but…”</p><p>He trailed off meaningfully.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé muttered. “Yeah, I, uh… I guess.”</p><p>Colm was pleased at that. More pleased than he’d thought he’d be – the more that he thought about it, the more that Aimé hung around, the more, he supposed, that he accustomed to the idea of Aimé being with them for Christmas.</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled at Colm very sweetly, even as he leaned his head on Aimé’s shoulder – although, Colm knew, as much of that sweetness was him basking in Aimé’s uncertainty as it was in Colm’s kindness.</p><p>There’d be a lot of them for Christmas this year.</p><p>It would be—</p><p>Well.</p><p>Who was to say if it would be nice?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. To Spar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>He’d been drinking less, he realised.</p><p>In the past few weeks, he’d gone back to drinking wine almost exclusively, and although he’d bought a bottle of vodka a few weeks ago, it had gone untouched in the back of his cupboard at home – he’d only drunk a little of the one he had at the angels’ house.</p><p>He didn’t know why.</p><p>He’d been thinking more about the wine he was drinking, he supposed – he hadn’t even been talking about it all that much, just thought more about the taste of each bottle. Drinking wine wasn’t like drinking vodka – the vodka he tended to drink without dwelling on it, drank it just to get drunk.</p><p>Wine, that was…</p><p>There was <em>meaning</em> in wine. More than taste or history – there was a depth of thought and philosophy in it, and there was something meditative in tasting different wines, in rolling them on his tongue and taking in each aroma, each taste, each texture.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had even taken to asking him about whatever wine he was drinking, asking where the grapes were grown, what they tasted like, if he would drink the same wine again.</p><p>And yet, here he was – he’d finished the bottle, a very rich, jammy shiraz that still stuck to his teeth in a way that wasn’t actually unpleasant, and he didn’t have a particular desire to open another one. He wasn’t even drunk, really – he’d been savouring this particular bottle so much that he’d been taking it in very slowly over the course of the day, and he’d eaten a fair bit in between glasses.</p><p>It was a little past two in the morning and, acting almost on autopilot, he was rinsing wine bottles under the sink until the water ran out of them clear. A friend of Colm’s was collecting glass in order to create some sort of art, and he’d been putting them aside so that he could take them to church for her.</p><p>It was fucking insane, in his opinion.</p><p>Not just that someone was collecting old wine bottles to make into art, but that he was washing bottles out for the sake of it. He still did it, though. It wasn’t even Jean-Pierre who’d asked him – Colm hadn’t even asked him, now he thought about it.</p><p>He’d just mentioned it while washing out a bottle at the angels’ house, and Aimé had started doing the same – and just started doing it in his own flat, too.</p><p>He heard the door close shut as Jean-Pierre came in, and Jean-Pierre came to a stop in the kitchen doorway.</p><p>“Oh,” he said. “You are awake… You are <em>dressed</em>.” His expression, which had initially been of surprise, faded into something more like concern, and just the expression, the furrow of Jean-Pierre’s eyebrows, the pout of his pretty pink lips, made something catch and twist in Aimé’s chest, making him want to flinch away even as Jean-Pierre dropped the bag that had been slung over his shoulders and come toward him.</p><p>He reached out, his palms delicately cupping Aimé’s cheeks, his thumbs brushing over the stubble there, and Aimé looked up at the angel’s face. It was a Saturday – or, it had been a Saturday, and was now a Sunday. He hadn’t been expecting to see Jean-Pierre until after Mass tomorrow morning.</p><p>“You cannot sleep?” Jean-Pierre asked softly, curling his fingers through Aimé’s hair.</p><p>“Laid down at a little past midnight,” Aimé murmured. “Tossed and turned for an hour or so, then got up again – thought I’d paint, but I just sat and looked at the canvas, finished off the bottle.”</p><p>“The Australian one,” Jean-Pierre supplied. “Full-bodied, low in tannin, jammier than it would have been if grown in a medium or cool climate – there were notes of anise in it, but because of the low acidity, it would not necessarily age well. You said other wines from the region, others made with the Syrah grape, have earthier qualities, like leather, but this one was all fruit, and all the better for it.”</p><p>Aimé’s eyebrows raised so high it felt like they’d disappeared into his hairline, and at his expression, Jean-Pierre looked almost demure, his cheeks flushing a slight pink, his blue eyes no longer meeting Aimé’s own. He could barely remember what he’d said earlier this afternoon, when he’d been talking to Jean-Pierre about the bottle in his hand, when he’d been explaining how Syrah grapes looked on the vine, how they were different to Cab Sav or Merlot, and different again to Grenache. It was difficult to believe, sometimes, that Jean-Pierre really listened so closely when he talked. God knew he tended to tune himself out.</p><p>“Well,” he said softly, brushing his fingers over the front of Aimé’s chest, “You speak with such passion, such expertise, when you speak of wine. There is a handsome allure in it.”</p><p>He was wearing one of Aimé’s wool jumpers, one that he’d been wearing earlier today until he’d taken it off to paint – he hadn’t even realised Jean-Pierre had taken it until after the angel had gone.</p><p>“I thought I would find you sleeping,” Jean-Pierre said quietly, one of his hands sliding to pepper gentle taps of his fingertips on the side of Aimé’s neck. Like this, looking up at his face – and Aimé never forgot he had to look up at the angel, but the reminder was always wonderful when they were stood together like this – Aimé could see the shine of Jean-Pierre’s blue eyes, and like this, too, he could see the shine of the scar that cut underneath his left eye, like someone had swiped over it with their thumb.</p><p>He reached up now, gently touched the pink, shiny flesh, feeling its smoothness under the pad of his thumb, finding himself surprised by the fact that it wasn’t all that raised away from the body of Jean’s cheek.</p><p>“Does it hurt?” Aimé asked quietly.</p><p>“Do yours?” Jean-Pierre asked, and brushed a finger against one of the scars on the side of his jaw. Jean-Pierre had never asked about it, but it seemed obvious to Aimé that he knew that it had been dislocated before, because although he regularly grabbed Aimé around the throat when they were fucking, his touch always turned gentle when he grasped Aimé by the chin.</p><p>Aimé couldn’t even remember the night he’d taken that particular blow – he remembered the lines of coke he’d done in the bathroom, cut with something that had made him laugh at the time, and he remembered the way people had cheered as he’d gotten into the ring with some fucking American behemoth as pale as Jean was, if not paler – Jean-Pierre’s skin was a pretty pale, but that man had looked like he’d never seen the sun, like he’d been kept inside just to box and fight. He didn’t remember much after the first punch – he’d woken up in hospital after they’d wired his jaw back into his head.</p><p>He hadn’t boxed much after that.</p><p>No one wanted to bet on him after the mess they’d made of his face – he’d been too much of a liability, and after years in the clubs he’d tended to, he’d gotten out of the habit of boxing for the sake of boxing, of training for the sake of training.</p><p>“Aimé?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“Hurts sometimes, yeah,” Aimé murmured. “When it’s cold, or when I eat toffee, when I go down on you for too long.”</p><p>“There is such a thing as too long?” Jean-Pierre asked, raising his eyebrows, and Aimé chuckled.</p><p>“You?”</p><p>“Not this one,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “But the ones here,” he moved Aimé’s hand lower, so that his hand cupped the side of Jean-Pierre’s waist, his hip, “the fragments of bullet still there catch in the muscle sometimes. It hurts.”</p><p>“You couldn’t take them out?”</p><p>“I heal very quickly,” Jean-Pierre said. “I have a quick regenerative factor – most angels do, winged angels especially. The flesh around the metal fragments has scarred, created small pockets so that the metal does not enter my bloodstream – the most concern they cause me is an ache from time to time, although I must be vigilant for lead poisoning.”</p><p>Aimé inhaled very slowly through his nostrils, feeling his lungs slowly fill under the touch of Jean-Pierre’s hand on his chest. “Why’d they shoot you?”</p><p>“All my scars are from firing squads, as I told you,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “The odd bullet here and there, I pick it out, I heal, it is nothing – but when it is a firing squad, there are too many bullets at once. I gouge out the most dangerous – the ones at my heart, my lungs – usually, the ones in my face, my head. I have been before the riflemen six times. Mostly, for inciting rebellion, or for treason.”</p><p>Aimé tried to imagine Jean-Pierre, slender and tall and pretty as he was, leading a charge in a revolution. It wasn’t really easy – he could imagine Jean-Pierre giving speeches, even knew that Jean-Pierre could be frightening, but imagining Jean-Pierre with a gun in his hand, or even carrying a flag, wasn’t so easy.</p><p>“They really put you in front of a firing squad for giving speeches?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre opened his mouth, his lips parting, and then he pressed them together again. His smile was small, and Aimé wondered if he was imagining the resignation in it, if he’d said the wrong thing – and after, almost surprised himself with the fact that he <em>cared</em>.</p><p>It mattered, he realised, if he upset Jean-Pierre without meaning to.</p><p>“They have put people before the riflemen for far less than that, mon cœur,” Jean-Pierre whispered.</p><p>Aimé’s father had never outright called him a fag before. He’d thought it very loudly – had even said it to other people when he’d caught Aimé with a bloke in his bed a few years back. Aimé wondered, in a distant sort of way, if Aimé’s knees going weak and his chest feeling fluttery at some asshole med student calling him <em>his heart</em> would be enough to qualify for the full terminology.</p><p>Jean-Pierre kissed him, then, tilting Aimé’s chin up to do so (he’d deserve to be called a faggot for that one, but it would <em>always</em> be worth it), and Aimé felt his eyes close shut without his thinking about it, felt himself lean forward against Jean-Pierre’s chest, fisting his hand in his own jumper as l’ange deepened the kiss.</p><p>When they broke apart, Jean-Pierre kept close to him, leaning to drag his teeth delicately over the shell of Aimé’s ear in a way that made a thrill run down his spine, one of his hands reaching up and gently squeezing Aimé’s throat.</p><p>“I had thought to find you sleeping,” Jean-Pierre whispered, “that I would have to rouse you early come the morning.”</p><p>“I’m pretty aroused now,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre agreed, sounding satisfied. “I see that.”</p><p>“So—”</p><p>“We don’t need a taxi,” Jean-Pierre said, breaking away from him, and Aimé stared after him as he moved away, picking up the bag he’d brought with him – it was a gym bag, a big, cream-coloured thing almost as big as Jean was. “We can walk.”</p><p>“Speak for yourself,” Aimé said, palming himself through his joggers, and Jean-Pierre glanced down at his crotch, then laughed.</p><p>The humiliation burned in his cheeks, but unfortunately, it was not the anaphrodisiac it would be if Aimé were anything close to sane, and he shoved the heel of his hand down against himself.</p><p>“The cool air will soothe your hot blood, Aimé,” Jean said confidently. “Come.”</p><p>“I would like to,” Aimé said. “<em>Before</em> we go wherever you want to go off to.”</p><p>“I’ll make it worth your while,” Jean-Pierre promised as he slowly stepped back, swinging his hips as he moved, and Aimé stared, powerlessly, at the way Jean-Pierre dragged up Aimé’s jumper and his own blouse, baring the flat expanse of his pale stomach. Jean-Pierre batted his eyelashes.</p><p>“Fuck’s sake,” Aimé muttered, and grabbed for his shoes.</p><p>Without ever looking away from him, Jean-Pierre said, in an insufferably sweet tone, “Bien joué, Aimé.”</p><p>“Va te faire enculer,” Aimé muttered.</p><p>Jean-Pierre looked at him very innocently, his eyes wide, his lips pouting. “Sans toi?”</p><p>“<em>No!”</em></p><p>Jean-Pierre’s laugh was a peal of pretty bells, and Aimé hated the heat that burned in his chest, that wasn’t entirely prompted by sex.</p><p>“Where are we going?”</p><p>“On va voir,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé shook his head as he got back to his feet.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“You know,” Aimé said, walking beside Jean-Pierre as they move through the empty Dublin streets. The night air was cool, and under Aimé’s shirt, which was one of his tightest, Jean-Pierre could see the pebbled show of his nipples in the cold, and the fabric of the shirt hugged tightly to the curve of his belly, riding up somewhat as he walked and showing the hair dusted over his navel. It was quite distracting. “Usually, when you slink into my apartment after you’ve been out doing shit with your brother, you just lie down in bed and watch a shitty historical drama while I try to sleep.”</p><p>If the cool air bothered Aimé, he didn’t say so, and when Jean-Pierre had offered him his hoodie, Aimé had shook his head, so Jean-Pierre had put it on himself, and now he huddled in it as they walked, his gym bag weight on his shoulder.</p><p>“Do I slink?” Jean-Pierre asked. “I don’t believe that I slink.”</p><p>“Like a polecat,” Aimé said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre regarded him with interest, surprised and delighted. “You have seen a polecat before?”</p><p>“In Montauban,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre smiled, reaching for Aimé’s arm and curling his own around it, so that they could walk arm-in-arm. Aimé did not pull away or complain, but gave Jean-Pierre a funny, fond smile – it was lopsided, and the mere sight of it made a warm feeling catch in his chest.</p><p>It was not that he was surprised at all to feel such affection for the other man – he had thought when first he had seen Aimé watch him that he might be interesting, that he might be <em>delightful</em>, and he was.</p><p>But the ways in which he was delightful…</p><p>Jean-Pierre did not think it would be unfair to say that Aimé reminded him, in some ways, of Jules. Not in every way, of course – Jules had never been rich and never so apathetic, but in the moments of kindness, in the moments where Aimé, seemingly without meaning to, did something rather sweet, and seemed surprised by it himself, in those moments…</p><p>“Tell me when,” Jean-Pierre said lowly.</p><p>“There was an old outbuilding down the end of the vineyard, near to where we composted the marc and discarded vines. We’d put deck chairs on top of it, because it was an old, flat-building built of clay brick or something, and drink some evenings. When the sun began to set, and it got a little darker, rats would come to the compost heap, and insects – and so would the polecats.”</p><p>“They were not frightened of you?”</p><p>“Maybe,” Aimé said. “If we were loud. But we were quiet, mostly, and we were a little way away from them, and on a high enough spot that I don’t think they really cared.”</p><p>“Asmodeus says they are not so common as they used to be,” Jean-Pierre said softly, “but I remember the first time I saw one. Jules and I had been walking some ways from the farm – we had walked to a town many miles away for a festival, and we walked all night to go home again.”</p><p>“Weren’t candles expensive back then?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed. It was not at all a bad question, and Aimé did not seem to ask it with a view to mockery, but it reminded him, keenly, of something Bui might have asked him – why should he be so very nostalgic, all of a sudden, thinking of lovers past behind him?</p><p>A soft ache settled in his chest, and he looked at Aimé’s lopsided face, his slightly raised eyebrows, his expectant chest. The ache softened, warmed, into something sweeter.</p><p>“I did not ever light a candle ‘til I was enrolled in medical school. We saw by the light of the fire, or we did not see at all. De had taught me a few lines of enchantment when first we met, and I had made a jar that looked like an oil lamp, but needed no fuel. We had been walking very far, and I had been complaining for my aching feet, when suddenly, Jules bade me be silent, put his hand over my mouth and held me tight against his breast. I thought he had seen some bear or brigand on the road ahead of us, but it was not so. We stood frozen as a polecat walked closer on the path, peering at us very suspiciously, but evidently she decided we were not any threat to her, for walked past us upon the road, and behind her scurried the smallest of polecat kits, three of them, bouncing after their mother. Jules laughed at me very heartily after we had let them pass, and said he should wish to see me clap eyes on all of God’s creatures, if I should view them all with such awe as I did then.”</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said, and it was only now that Jean-Pierre realised the corners of his eyes were wet, his vision abruptly threatening to blur. Aimé reached for him and grasped him by the hips, pulling him to stop, and after a moment of anxiously looking down at himself, he reached into Jean-Pierre’s own pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, offering it to him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s laugh was too joyful to really be called a sob, and he quickly dabbed at his damp eyes, then pulled Aimé up into a kiss. He could still taste the Shiraz on his tongue – it <em>was</em> fruity, heavy and sweet in the way that grape skins were, and when he pulled away, Aimé’s hands were still touching his hips.</p><p>Aimé couldn’t protect him from anything, of course – Jean-Pierre would be hard-pressed to believe he could defend himself from an angry housecat, let alone an enemy soldier – but nonetheless, there was a sense of safety in it.</p><p>“You don’t have to tell me about them,” Aimé said. “If you don’t want to. You don’t have to talk about it.”</p><p>“I want to,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “You hear me speak of past lovers, and what, you think what I feel is purely grief?”</p><p>“When you cry over it?” Aimé asked wryly. “Yeah, grief sounds about right.”</p><p>He wondered what Aimé was feeling in this moment – he hated to empathise as Colm did, found it cloying and overwhelming, and it did spoil the surprise with new lovers, but in this moment, he almost wanted it, wanted to know what was hiding under the surface, when Aimé spoke that wittily, and averted his eyes as he did so.</p><p>“Does it frighten you?” Jean-Pierre asked softly.</p><p>“Frighten me?” Aimé repeated.</p><p>“You think I compare you to men I have loved before,” Jean-Pierre said, and watched the catch in Aimé’s face, the quake of his plump, unbalanced lip, the slight widening of his eyes, and he felt so very full with feeling he could scarcely reckon with it.</p><p>“No—”</p><p>“I do,” Jean-Pierre said, cupping his cheeks and making Aimé look up at him, stopping him from wrenching his gaze away again. It was nice, that Aimé was so short, compared to him, that Jean-Pierre could hold him so easily in his hands, like something precious. “I do, you know. There is no shame in it – I have loved other men, and I shall love others after you are dead. You think this lessens my affection for you now? You would compare yourself, living, to men dead before you?”</p><p>“Would I compare myself to dead guys? When the dead guys you’ve dated have been, from what you’ve said, revolutionaries and saints? Yeah, Jean, I will a little bit.”</p><p>“You are still very young,” Jean-Pierre pointed out. “There is more than enough time for you to become one or the other.”</p><p>Aimé laughed. There was less bitterness in it than Jean-Pierre had expected, although still more than was ideal, and Jean-Pierre took Aimé by the arm again, leading him forward.</p><p>“Never have I loved a perfect man, Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said quietly.</p><p>“Well, that makes one of us,” Aimé muttered, and he stubbornly did not look at Jean-Pierre as Jean-Pierre basked at the warmth in his cheeks, the delight that Aimé should say such a thing, no matter the sarcasm in it. “Where the fuck are we <em>going</em>?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre took Aimé by the hand and led him through a basement door beneath a burrito shop, and down the long, doorless corridor beneath. The corridor was scantly lit and had grey-washed walls, and when he glanced at Aimé’s face, he saw the uncertainty in it.</p><p>He wondered if Aimé would show as much joy as Jean-Pierre hoped he would over this – he did hope he would like it, he <em>did</em>. It seemed to him that every one of Aimé’s smiles was more precious than the last, in these recent months, and he always found himself wanting more of them – and even when Aimé didn’t smile, he looked at Jean-Pierre with something like worship in his eyes, and there was a wonder in that.</p><p>It was a twenty-four hour gym, and when Jean-Pierre led the way past the grim front desk, where a satyr sprawled back in an office chair, idly paging through a woman’s magazine, Aimé walked a little faster, looking around with interest, curiosity, showing in his eyes.</p><p>They moved past the room full of exercise equipment and standing bikes and treadmills, where a few people were scattered about under the dim lighting, jogging or working their muscles, and past the stairs that led into the swimming pool, which smelt like salt instead of chlorine, and had kelp covering its bottom.</p><p>Down another set of stairs, the lights were off when Jean-Pierre pushed open the doors, and it was almost pitch black until he pulled away from Aimé to find their place on the wall and flick them on.</p><p>It wasn’t anything very ornate or pretty. Many of the practice bags were bursting at their seams or had leather so worn it looked decades old, and when you punched some of the sacks, their chains creaked ominously: the ring was plain black and serviceable, although one of the turnbuckles was bent, and the ropes were loose on the far left side.</p><p>Aimé stood at the bottom of the steps into the room, his mouth ajar.</p><p>Jean-Pierre dropped his gym bag, and unzipped it, tugging out one of the pairs of sparring gloves and tossing them to Aimé, who caught them and held them loosely against his chest as though he’d never seen their like before.</p><p>“I am unused to boxing with gloves like these,” Jean-Pierre said, fishing out his own pair, “but I am a fair boxer – not so good as my brother, but good enough.”</p><p>“De boxes?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Asmodeus? No, no, he wouldn’t step into a boxing ring if you paid him. Colm has boxed, though, and boxed for money too.”</p><p>“These are my gloves,” Aimé said. “You pick them out of my wardrobe?”</p><p>“I thought they might like an outing,” Jean-Pierre said. He hesitated, biting the inside of his lip as he looked to Aimé, who was still staring down at the gloves in his hands, his expression unreadable. “I have made you unhappy,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I have assumed too much. We need not box, if you would not like to – we can—”</p><p>“With you?” Aimé asked, raising his head. “You want me to box with you?”</p><p>“I won’t hurt you,” Jean-Pierre promised, and Aimé laughed.</p><p>“Uh,” he said, shaking his head, “yeah, Jean, I’m sure you won’t. I know you’re strong, but you’re barely even a flyweight, and I’ve been boxing since I was a kid. I don’t want to hurt <em>you</em>.”</p><p>It was sweet. Misguided, certainly, and arrogant in a way that made Jean’s blood flush and hot in his veins, but still— <em>Sweet</em>.</p><p>Wriggling out of Aimé’s jumper, he neatly folded it and Aimé’s hoodie and set them down on a folding chair beside the ring, then beginning to take off his jeans and put them aside too.</p><p>“I brought shorts for you,” Jean-Pierre said. “If you don’t want to box in those.”</p><p>“Why are we doing this?” Aimé asked as he slid his joggers down his legs, and Jean-Pierre stared at him unashamedly as Aimé tugged a pair of shorts out of Jean-Pierre’s gym bag, sliding them up his legs. He was smiling, which Jean-Pierre liked very much.</p><p>“I thought you might miss boxing,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“Maybe I do,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Colm has a subscription to this gym,” Jean-Pierre said. “He likes to swim here – he has been teaching George to swim. I got you a membership at the same time I paid for George’s. It is always this quiet at night, you know, and there aren’t so many boxers here – this room is often forgotten. You might have the run of it, most times.”</p><p>“Oh, might I?” Aimé asked, mocking Jean-Pierre’s accent as he did so, and Jean-Pierre couldn’t contain his beam, feeling the smile tug at his lips. Aimé was smiling too, his gaze on Jean-Pierre’s face, and then he pulled his mouth guard out of the bag, tossing Jean-Pierre’s over to him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre slipped the guard into his mouth, then tugged his head guard out of the bag, holding it under his arm as he tied his hair in a bun.</p><p>“You know, for not boxing with gloves, you don’t seem like you’re new to putting equipment on,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre gave him a dazzling smile, but did not say anything as he went to the ring and pulled himself onto the mat. “You need to wear shorts that tight more often,” Aimé said.</p><p>“We must exercise together more often, then,” Jean-Pierre said. “As your doctor, I think it would be good for your health.”</p><p>“You calling me fat, ange?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned on the ropes, his lips parting as he watched Aimé pull his own head guard on, fastening it in place. “Have you gained much weight since you stopped boxing? I like the shape you are now.”</p><p>Aimé huffed out a low, derisive sound.</p><p>“I’ve lost weight, actually,” he said. “Less muscle.”</p><p>“Ooh,” Jean-Pierre said, not bothering to keep the salacious interest out of his voice, and Aimé pulled himself up into the ring. For all his demurring, and for all he drank, Aimé was physically fit – he had a healthy body, a wide chest and a rounded belly, and fat packed over his muscle so that when Jean-Pierre laid on top of him, his body exuded heat like a furnace. Jean-Pierre had watched him – some mornings, never to any sort of schedule, he did push-ups, and Jean-Pierre liked to get him to take off his shirt to do so, so that he could watch the movement of the muscles in his shoulders as they worked, and see the beguiling shudder of his hairy breast.</p><p>“You’re fucking weird, you know that?” Aimé had said when he’d voiced that out loud, and in a mocking voice, pressing his chest together, he’d added, “What, Jean, you want to fuck my tits?”</p><p>“Yes, please,” Jean-Pierre had said, and Aimé had laughed so hard he’d turned plum red, but hadn’t complained at all when Jean-Pierre had straddled his chest.</p><p>“What are you smiling about?” Aimé asked, bringing his hands, now gloved, before his face and taking a fighting stance.</p><p>“Your tits,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>Aimé looked at him very flatly, his hands dropping to his sides. “Jean,” he complained.</p><p>“Desolé,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and raised his own hands. “En garde.”</p><p>Aimé stayed standing for far longer than Jean-Pierre had expected.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Sitting back against one of the corners of the ring, his head guard and mouth guard dropped aside, Aimé stared at Jean-Pierre’s beautiful face, shining with a little sweat, his hair sticking to his temples and the sides of his jaw where bits of it had come loose from his ponytail.</p><p>They were drinking from the same bottle of water, which Aimé needed – Jean-Pierre sweated delicately like the angel he was, but Aimé was drenched, and his shirt was stuck to his chest. He was grateful for the shorts – if he’d tried this in his joggers, he was fairly certain he’d have fucking died.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was quick and nimble on his feet, and he guarded against almost every blow – he was far more patient than Aimé would have expected, and far more defensive than offensive, but when he did land a punch, Aimé <em>felt</em> it.</p><p>He didn’t know how long they’d gone for, but it must have been a while, because when Jean had finally managed a good hit to the side of his face and Aimé had lost his footing, falling hard on his arse, the momentary rest had made him aware of how his whole <em>body</em> ached, how he needed the break.</p><p>It felt—</p><p>It felt good, actually. The tired ache was more than familiar to him, comforting, a pained heat in his muscles that made him want to box again.</p><p>“That was good,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre’s smile was dazzling.</p><p>“You liked it?” he asked softly, sounding almost disbelieving. “You are a good boxer – easy to fell, but not so easy as I expected!”</p><p>Aimé opened his mouth, and closed it right after. He decided to let that one go. “I liked it,” he confirmed. “You didn’t have to get me a membership.”</p><p>“I thought we might come together, from time to time,” Jean-Pierre murmured, a small smile on his face. “You watch my dramas with me, and come to music sessions, and you come to volunteer with us. I would not have you give all of yourself to me, and never give in return.”</p><p>Aimé didn’t know what to make of that, exactly. He drew the bottle to his mouth, swallowing down a few mouthfuls of it. Jean-Pierre’s gaze dropped to his throat, watching him gulp it down, and Aimé felt himself shiver. There was something weird about the way Jean-Pierre watched him, sometimes, like Aimé was something very hot, very desirable, that never felt quite real.</p><p>“You sit with me when I paint,” Aimé said. “Get me to read to you. Ask me about wine.”</p><p>“But I do not know about wine, except for what you teach me,” Jean-Pierre murmured, crawling forward on the floor of the ring and putting his hands either side of Aimé’s thighs, “and I would not paint with you.”</p><p>“You can draw,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Anatomical drawings and technical diagrams,” Jean-Pierre said, shrugging his shoulders. “I do not create beauty as you do. I—”</p><p>“Wait, wait, lemme say this one,” Aimé said, squinting his eyes and looking at Jean-Pierre’s face. Mimicking l’ange’s accent, he said, “<em>I exist to be painted, not to hold a brush?</em>”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, all teeth and prettiness. “That is rather good,” he murmured, his eyes shining. “The accent needs work, though.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah?”</p><p>“I don’t sound like a southerner,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé snorted, then jumped when Jean-Pierre’s fingers tugged at the waistband of his shorts.</p><p>“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.</p><p>“You cannot glean from context?” Jean-Pierre asked, raising one eyebrow and pushing the waistband down to get at his cock.</p><p>“What the— Jean, we’re in <em>public</em>, you can’t just— Haa, <em>fuck</em>—” he gasped out as Jean-Pierre lowered his head, one of his hands grabbing tightly at his head band and the other grabbing at the ropes beside him, his thighs spreading reflexively apart. Jean-Pierre just bobbed his head lower.</p><p>He felt like he was on fucking <em>fire</em> the whole time, his eyes rooted the door, frightened that someone else would walk in – the goat-man who’d been sat at the desk, or one of the vampires who’d been using the treadmills, <em>someone</em>, but mercifully, the door never moved.</p><p>“We should go home,” Jean-Pierre said afterward, delicately wiping his mouth. “I want to shower before we go to bed.”</p><p>They walked in relative silence, until Jean-Pierre said, apropos of nothing, “You know, I never boxed with any of my lovers. Not even with Rupert, and he loved the sport.”</p><p>The smile on Aimé’s face was so wide it hurt his cheeks.</p><p>“You needn’t look so giddy about it,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“If you hadn’t wanted me to smile,” Aimé said, “you wouldn’t have said it.”</p><p>That night, Jean-Pierre sprawled on top of him, hair still damp from the shower, Aimé slept like the dead. He woke before Jean, and when he elected to wake him up with his mouth, Jean-Pierre came awake with a sharp cry, and sobbed under Aimé’s mouth.</p><p>Things were better, with Jean.</p><p>Things were good.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm currently doing two giveaways for my book, Heart of Stone! Here's the one on <a href="https://twitter.com/JohannesEvans/status/1325021712069652480">Twitter, and here's the one on </a><a href="https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/post/634157293127286784/book-giveaway">Tumblr!</a> Winners will be drawn on Tuesday 10th of November at 7pm UTC.</p><p>Please please remember to comment on new chapters and let me know what you think! I'd love to know how people feel about how things are developing.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Violent Dreams</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>When he woke, it was to the sensation of a blade pressed against his throat, and he could feel the tiny teeth of its serrated edge against his skin. He felt his lips curve into a smile, and he sighed, leaning his head back into the hand fisted in his hair, gripping him tightly.</p><p>“Hello, Manoli,” he murmured, feeling the affection swell in his chest. “Are you going to slit my throat?”</p><p>“Not this morning,” Manolis purred in his ear, and with his other hand hooked two fingers into him, making Jean-Pierre gasp out a sharp noise. “But I might give you a pretty new smile another day.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre opened his eyes, turning to meet his gaze, but it wasn’t Manolis’ face that he saw, and he felt his mouth fall open. Bui was smiling at him, and suddenly, there was no harsh grip on his hair – Bui was gently stroking through the locks, combing his fingers through it, and he had Jean-Pierre held in his lap.</p><p>“Bui?” Jean-Pierre asked. “I thought…”</p><p>“I dropped a piece of my puzzle, the star. Do you know where it is?”</p><p>“It’s by my desk,” Jean-Pierre said, touching Bui’s cheek as he stood to his feet. “I’ll get it, I want to fetch my glass, anyway.” He leaned forward, pulling himself off of the couch where he’d been curled against Bui’s shoulder, and he padded into the other room, but the wooden piece wasn’t on the floor like he’d thought it had been.</p><p>Farhad was sitting at the desk, his chin rested on his hand, slumped forward as he looked at the sketches spread out before him – they were for the community garden, Jean-Pierre distantly remembered, for the youth centre. Farhad’s hair was thinning, and Jean-Pierre felt a quiet ache in his chest as he reached out, stroking his fingers down the other man’s back.</p><p>“Hi, baby,” Farhad murmured, reaching back and squeezing Jean-Pierre’s waist. “I’ve taken my AZT. You don’t need to nag.”</p><p>“Do I nag you?” Jean-Pierre asked, leaning to press a kiss to the top of his head.</p><p>“No,” Farhad murmured, and stood to his feet on slightly shaky legs. “You just look so sweetly concerned. I’m going to make tea – ask Benoit if he wants some, will you?”</p><p>“Benoit?” Jean-Pierre repeated, and turned his head.</p><p>Benoit glanced up from his sewing. Jean-Pierre had finished up his tunic, but he’d forgotten one of the buttons – it had fallen from the dish he’d been working from – and Benoit was finishing it up, although his fingers were slower and clumsier than Jean-Pierre’s, and Jean-Pierre already knew he would resew the button himself, once Benoit was home tonight.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” Benoit asked. “Distress doesn’t suit you, bijou.”</p><p>“Nothing, nothing,” Jean-Pierre said. “I’ll get you some hot chocolate.”</p><p>Jules was already heating it over the fire when he went into other room, and Jean-Pierre fell onto the rug beside the fire, wrapping his arms loosely around his waist and pressing his nose into Jules’ strong shoulders.</p><p>“Here I thought you were an angel,” Jules said. “But I see you are a monkey.”</p><p>“I missed you,” Jean-Pierre said softly, squeezing Jules tighter. In the other room, Marguerite was singing some silly song under her breath, and Jean-Pierre could hear the scattered sound of Anicroche’s paws upon the floor as she danced with him. “I miss you, Jules.”</p><p>There was a knife in his hand.</p><p>He could feel the weight of his armour, specially made for him, on his body, on his shoulders, clinging to his waist and thighs, and it felt incredibly comfortable even as the plates clicked against one another. The sunshine was warm on his face, and he gripped the dagger.</p><p>The speeches were still going.</p><p>So many of them, speech after speech after speech, and Jean-Pierre looked out over the gathered crowd, hundreds upon hundreds of them, thousands, all watching so raptly, paying such keen attention, although Jean-Pierre wondered how they could when his armour was shining like this. Didn’t it hurt their eyes? Didn’t it hurt their eyes looking at the burning flame that was Jean-Pierre – and at the burn of Rupert, too, who needed no armour to shine?</p><p>His uncle was lowering the crown onto his head with two hands, and the crowd was cheering so very loudly – the knife was a comfortable weight in his hand.</p><p>Cheering for a coronation.</p><p>Who could be so mad as to cheer at that?</p><p>“I will strive to be worthy of, to truly live up to, the trust you have each placed in me today – with all my soul, I vow to you, I will strive to be a true and honest king, a king worthy of you.”</p><p>True. Honest. Good.</p><p>How could a king be any of those?</p><p>A king was—</p><p>“You know my fiancé, Jean-Pierre Delacroix, each and every one of you – we share our ideals as one mind, and likewise, we share a love for you, for all the people of this fine nation, now crowned with a new legitimacy. Jean-Pierre, will you—”</p><p>Rupert’s throat opened so smoothly, so easily, under the blade of Jean-Pierre’s knife – it was ceremonial, but it was well-honed, and he was impressed with that. His handsome brown eyes were so very wide, full to the brim with betrayal, and he gurgled, reaching up to clutch for his throat, but Jean-Pierre had cut it so deeply it gaped open, cut back until he could see the bone.</p><p>The silence lasted only a moment, and then, such chaos there was – such screaming, so many hands on his body, grabbing at his wings, his arms, his hair.</p><p>Too late.</p><p>Rupert hit the floor, and Jean-Pierre expected the drop of his body to make a noise, but there was none – the thud was silent, and he heard only the roar of the crowd in his ears, and he laughed faintly as they dragged his armour off of him, because it was <em>his</em> armour. They’d given it to him.</p><p>“You gonna watch me die too, sweetheart?” Aimé asked, his breath hot in Jean-Pierre’s ear, as they looked at all the bodies together. It was wrong, somehow, Jean-Pierre knew it was wrong, that there was something deeply incorrect about it all. There was a painful tug in his chest as he looked at each coffin, but the bodies weren’t laid out correctly, weren’t <em>right</em>.</p><p>Jules was laid in the pyjamas he had died in, his hair very white and thin on his head, his wrinkles seeming oddly pronounced; Manolis’ chest was open where the shot had wrenched the flesh, and Rupert’s torn throat was still seeping blood; Bui looked so pale and sick, the sweat still on his skin;  Benoit’s face was lopsided from the stroke, but he remembered, he remembered, they’d covered his face—</p><p>He looked away from Farhad in his hospital gown, and when he cried, Aimé laughed at him, cupping his cheeks.</p><p>“Gonna kill me too, Jean?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre said. “No, I wouldn’t, I would never—”</p><p>“You killed Rupert.”</p><p>“No, I mean, I did, yes, but you do not understand, Aimé, it was an execution, it was for the good of the people—”</p><p>“Did you wait until after the crown was on his head so you’d score more points with Colm?” Aimé asked softly, a smile on his face, and Jean-Pierre was really crying now, the tears streaming down his face, couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop himself. “Seven points for a ruling monarch, isn’t it? Did it feel good to kill him?”</p><p>“Aimé, Aimé, don’t, don’t—”</p><p>“Me next, sweetheart,” Aimé said, and tugged the knife up against his own throat, pulled it against the skin until blood beaded to the surface, and Jean-Pierre shook his head, sobbed for him not to—</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said, “Jean, Jean, I have you, I have you, sweetheart, you’re okay, you’re okay, hey—”</p><p>Jean-Pierre was gasping as he came awake, so hot he felt like he was burning, the sweat soaking his skin, and he grabbed for Aimé, tried to get closer to him, to hold him. Aimé kept hushing him with nonsense words, holding him tightly, letting Jean-Pierre wrap more firmly around his chest, and he cradled the back of Jean-Pierre’s head.</p><p>“Hey, hey, hey,” Aimé whispered against the side of his temple, all but rocking Jean-Pierre in his lap, “I have you, ange, I’ve got you, you’re okay, you’re okay.”</p><p>The door opened suddenly, sharply, clattering against the back wall, and Jean-Pierre choked on his next sob as he buried his face more firmly against Aimé’s shoulder.</p><p>“He just woke up like this,” Aimé said, sounding panicked, “I don’t know what to do, Colm, I—”</p><p>“It’s a nightmare, he’ll be okay. Gimme a sec, I’ll make some hot chocolate.”</p><p>“It won’t make him sick?”</p><p>“A little is okay,” Colm said. “You’ll want it too.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre was shivering, felt freezing cold, and he whimpered a complaint as Aimé lifted him up out of bed, gripping at him tighter.</p><p>“No, I’m not putting you down, sweetheart, I promise,” Aimé said, carrying him across the room and leaning on the door of the bathroom, holding Jean-Pierre up with one hand so he could turn the dial for the shower. “You’re soaking, we just need to get you washed up, okay? You don’t want to stay sweaty.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shuddered in a gasp as Aimé pulled him under the hot spray, leaning back against one of the shelves and holding Jean-Pierre awkwardly in his lap, letting the hot water wash over them both. Aimé’s hands were gentle as he kept himself braced against the wall, reaching up to wash his hands through Jean-Pierre’s hair.</p><p>Aimé’s sleep shirt and pyjama bottoms were soaked with the water and clinging to him, and Jean-Pierre absently cupped Aimé’s chest.</p><p>“Again with my tits,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre hiccoughed, but then he laughed, breathlessly. “That’s what I like to hear,” Aimé said softly. “I love that laugh, Jean. You’re okay, see? Nice and warm, and I have you, I’ve got you. Nothing to be scared of.”</p><p>Aimé was holding him tightly, one arm wound around his waist as he washed soap over his body with the other hand, and Jean-Pierre breathed in the hot steam from the shower, feeling it wash out his blocked nose.</p><p>“I have nightmares too sometimes,” Aimé was babbling, talking in a low voice as though he had no idea what to say next, and was just saying whatever first came to mind, “bet mine are worse than yours. Yours don’t have my mother in them.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre giggled softly, and he touched Aimé’s throat, feeling where the skin was healthy and smooth and not cut at all, and Aimé laughed too, rubbing his back.</p><p>“You okay?” Aimé asked, cupping his cheek. “You okay?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “Just a nightmare.”</p><p>“Just a nightmare,” Aimé agreed, and kept scrubbing him down. “That’s all, sweetheart, just a nightmare.”</p><p>Aimé remembered the first time Jules had bathed him as Aimé continued to wash him down. The water hadn’t been warm like this, and there hadn’t been so much soap – it had been in the river, freezing cold water as Jean-Pierre had complained and whined the entire time, and afterward, Jules had put his mouth on him for the first time.</p><p>Aimé didn’t do that, but for once, Jean-Pierre wasn’t really in the mood.</p><p>Jean-Pierre let himself he towelled down, and instead of Jean-Pierre’s silk kimono, Aimé wrapped him in one of the cardigans Asmodeus had left instead, and he carried Jean-Pierre downstairs, held him tightly even though Jean-Pierre would be perfectly capable of walking himself, if he wanted to.</p><p>Colm started to pour a mug of hot chocolate, but Aimé put Jean-Pierre down for a moment and told him to stop, and Jean-Pierre watched, chest aching, as Aimé pulled a bowl down from the cupboard and poured it into that instead, bringing it over for he and Jean-Pierre to share.</p><p>Colm came and sat on the sofa with them, curled against Jean-Pierre’s other side, and they held him until he stopped shaking.</p><p> *     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre sat quietly, wrapped loosely in a blanket, and watched Bedelia and George work.</p><p>He hadn’t had any further nightmares after the other night, although he’d slept uneasily the night previous – it was a Saturday morning, and Aimé had been spending the past few days working at home. He had a lot of reading to get through, on top of some mid-term tests, and he had promised Jean-Pierre to wear whatever Halloween costume Jean wanted so long as Jean-Pierre spent the next week or so encouraging him to study – which this weekend he was doing by being absent.</p><p>Aimé had chided him for distracting him from the next room as Jean-Pierre had been cutting apples, and Jean-Pierre had laughed as Aimé hoisted him up onto the counter top, tugging Aimé’s pyjama bottoms, already very loose around his waist, down his legs.</p><p>His mere presence, according to Aimé, was a distraction too enticing to ignore, and the thought made Jean-Pierre smile.</p><p>“So we let the dough rest for a while, which helps it dry out,” Bedelia said, rolling dough between her palms, and Jean-Pierre watched the smooth, easy movement of her hands, and then he looked to George’s face, his rapt, focused gaze as he paid attention to her. “We roll it out with the pin – you use oil, not flour, okay? To keep the dough from sticking. We make a disc, and then we cut it in two, and then we have the filling…”</p><p>Bedelia carefully held the samosa in the palm of her hand, taking it by the corners to fold it into a little, triangular parcel, and then she set it aside.</p><p>“Your turn,” she said softly, and George rushed to take up some of the softly yellow dough himself, beginning to roll it between his palms. He didn’t make such a neat, perfect circle on the chopping board as Bedelia did, its edges uneven and made of different thicknesses, but Bedelia corrected it for him.</p><p>He overfilled the samosa.</p><p>Padraic’s hand settled as a heavy weight on Jean-Pierre’s shoulder, and he squeezed hard at the muscle there, making Jean-Pierre let out a pinched sound of pain, followed by a soft sigh, and he leaned into Padraic’s arm, letting the other man curl his fingers in Jean-Pierre’s hair.</p><p>He looked up at Padraic, and he watched Padraic’s hand make the sign for Aimé’s name that Bedelia had given him, touching his chest before asking where he was.</p><p>“He’s got an exam in class on Monday – he’s studying.”</p><p><em>An exam? </em>Padraic asked, tilting his head slightly to the side. <em>Isn’t it early?</em></p><p> “It’s just an MCQ – multiple choice. He’s studying between painting, going back and forth between the canvas and the page.”</p><p>Padraic nodded his head, turning away from Jean-Pierre for a moment to watch George and Bedelia, to watch George carefully copying Bedelia’s movements to fold more samosas and set them onto the plate. Turning back to Jean-Pierre, he signed, <em>Colm says he’s a good painter. That he uses…</em></p><p>Jean-Pierre watched the movement of Padraic’s hands, shaking his head. “He uses?”</p><p>Padraic moved his hand again, spelling the word, and Jean-Pierre looked to Bedelia and George.</p><p>“Oils,” George supplied helpfully. “Oil paints.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jean-Pierre said, and gave Padraic a warm smile. “Yes, he paints with oils – in his painting area, he has very tall shelves with little cube-shaped recesses for all hid different paint tubes, and he keeps everything stacked so neatly. He stores all of the colours in the world in that studio, you know.”</p><p>Padraic arched his eyebrows, disbelief showing in his face.</p><p>“What?” he asked.</p><p><em>Aimé?</em> Padraic signed. <em>Neat</em>?</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, and Colm turned around from the kitchen, looking between the two of them. He was smiling already as he asked, “What? What did he say?”</p><p>Padraic signed rapidly, and Colm laughed.</p><p>“He keeps his studio very tidy,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “There are a few paint stains, but everything has its place in his studio – he’s so meticulous. Soaks his brushes, sorts them by size and material, and his paints are sorted by shade, and I have tested him, you know – if you move a few tubes of paint about, swap their positions, he notices immediately, and sets them right again. He doesn’t recall the names of his canvases, but he puts them in order so that they can dry properly, and he sorts them so that he knows much longer they need to cure.</p><p>“Aimé says that curing a painting is like letting wine mature. You might have finished its process, but it must be left alone for a time before it is fit to be tasted.” He was aware of the softness, the fondness, in his own voice, and Padraic looked down at him, a small smile on his face.</p><p>“I can read your hands to some extent, Paddy, but it is beyond me to read meaning in your face,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>Padraic inhaled through his nose, sighed, and then signed something. It was smooth, easy, and Jean-Pierre read the word “like”, or “good”, maybe, that something was good, but he couldn’t quite follow the rest.</p><p>“He says it’s nice,” Bedelia said, “to hear someone talk about a person they love. Daddy!” She protested as Colm started laughing, and Jean-Pierre looked between the two of them, baffled.</p><p><em>What</em>? Padraic signed innocently.</p><p>“He said, even if he’s a prick,” George said.</p><p>“You’ve barely met him,” Jean-Pierre chided, and Padraic shrugged his great shoulders, stepping across the room and touching the top of Bedelia’s hair as he went into the kitchen with Colm, starting to wash the dishes. Jean-Pierre didn’t miss the way his gaze lingered on Bedelia’s hands, gently guiding George’s own, touching his fingers.</p><p>Bedelia was gentle about it, but George let out a soft, giggled sound, and if skin was lighter, Jean-Pierre expected that the flush would be visible in his cheeks and at the top of his ears as he wriggled in his place.</p><p>Jean-Pierre wondered what it would feel like, if he drew back the enchantments he’d painted on his skin a few months ago, dampening his empathy, to feel the emotions between them. George always looked giddy these days, when Bedelia looked at him and they spent time together, Jean-Pierre knew – Bedelia had brought George into one of her lectures, one about anatomy, and George had fainted when the lecturer had showed video of a heart beating.</p><p>He’d seen on Facebook the video of her carrying him out, apologising as she lifted him over one of her shoulders and took him into the hallway to bring him around again.</p><p>Engineered mechanics were a delight for George – biological mechanics were a different matter entirely, it seemed.</p><p>Bedelia was cupping George’s cheek now, and Jean-Pierre watched George’s eyes flit down to the front of Bedelia’s breast, the cleavage she showed with her floral dress, before rapidly, ashamedly, rushing to look at her face again. Bedelia laughed, glancing to make sure her father’s back was turned, and then titled George’s head down.</p><p>This made George laugh, slapping her hand away and leaning back, blinking rapidly and squirming as he tried to stifle his laughter.</p><p>Some biological mechanics were more suited to George than others.</p><p>It was not at all unusual for angels to take up with one another – Jean-Pierre had slept with other angels in his time, and he’d known other angels to get married to one another. It wasn’t tremendously common, but nor was it wholly taboo – a few people within the Embassy were uncomfortable with it, but Jean-Pierre had never heard a convincing argument as to why.</p><p>They were more likely to be upset that Bedelia had Fallen as an infant, instead of the way most of them Fell.</p><p>Colm’s phone began to vibrate on the table, and Jean-Pierre looked to him as he wiped his hands on a dish towel, pulling it up and holding it to his ear. “Colm anseo.” Jean-Pierre watched his brother’s face as he listened to the person on the other end of the line, his expression turning serious.</p><p>Jean-Pierre slowly stood to his feet, neatly folding his blanket and setting it back down.</p><p>“We need the rifles this time?” he asked as he passed his brother by, stepping through the ajar pantry door.</p><p>“Knives only – pack your pick set and my burglary kit.”</p><p>“D’accord,” Jean-Pierre said, and pulled back the hatch.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>It was mercifully not raining as he cycled back to his apartment on Monday evening. It had been raining on and off all day, the rain a constant rhythm on the roof outside as he’d gone to his lectures, taken a few mid-term tests. He’d handed in two of his big essays last night, and he still had work to do, but he didn’t have another test until Thursday, and it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he spent the night at the angels’ tonight.</p><p>He whistled under his breath as he came up to his apartment, ready to drop his bag off and pick up the Carménère he’d left on the counter before cycling out again, but when he stepped into the studio, the lights were already on.</p><p>“Jean?” he asked, looking around as he dropped his satchel, but it wasn’t Jean that stepped out of the kitchen, and Aimé felt his chest twist.</p><p>His father stood straight, his expression serious, and after they stood together for a moment, staring at one another, he said, with a vague gesture at the room, “It’s very clean. Tidy. Your new girlfriend do this?”</p><p>“What are you doing here?” Aimé asked, pulling a few of the books out of his bag and stacking them loosely on one of the counters, leaving his laptop inside as he moved past his father and picked the bottle off of the counter.</p><p>“We haven’t heard from you,” his father said lowly. “You know Cliona Deely? She’s in your course. Mentioned to her father you’d been dating, and he mentioned it to me. Thought I’d check in.”</p><p>“Wanted to see if I’d be getting married, you mean?” Aimé asked, arching an eyebrow. “See if I’d make myself useful for once and get you some grandchildren?”</p><p>The faux-cordial expression on his father’s face faded, and his expression soured. His lips thinned into a line, and then he said, “You’ve been ignoring your mother’s calls. She’s been upset.”</p><p>“I’ll call this week,” Aimé said. “That it?”</p><p>“You don’t want to tell me about this new girl?” his father said.</p><p>“He’s not a girl,” Aimé said.</p><p>The expression on his father’s face was interesting. Rage showed on his expression, flared in his eyes, but then it went cool and quiet, and he set his jaw, although his lip curled in disgust.</p><p>“I see,” he said. “Is that what this is about?” He gestured to his own mouth, and Aimé stared at him, uncomprehending. “Oh, don’t play coy with <em>me</em>, Aimé – you go from drink to drugs to cutting yourself for attention, and now, you take up with some <em>boy</em>? Let him do some debauched sex charm on your mouth? What is it, a piercing?”</p><p>Aimé shouted out vaguely as his father grabbed him by the jaw, forcing his mouth open so that he could look at his tongue, even as Aimé felt the base fall out of his stomach, felt like he was going to be sick, so much rage bubbled up in him all at once.</p><p>“It’s none of your— fuck, it’s none of your <em>fucking</em> business, Christ,” Aimé snapped, shoving his father’s hands off.</p><p>“What is it?” his father demanded, trying to grab for him again, but he had none of the strength Aimé did, and he couldn’t overpower him no matter how he tried. “An enchantment on the skin, do you have any <em>idea</em> how dangerous that is? Always so cavalier with—”</p><p>“It’s to help me stop smoking,” Aimé spat out, trying to convince himself of it, trying to convince himself that it was okay even as he played the last few weeks over and over again in his head, of Jean-Pierre sitting behind him with a frame and scratching him for allergies, of Jean-Pierre pouting out his lips and seeming so <em>fucking</em> concerned—</p><p>And he’d known it.</p><p>He wasn’t stupid. He knew he wasn’t stupid, Aimé knew, had known, had never stopped knowing, but he hadn’t been able to really seriously consider it when he’d not known how Jean-Pierre might have actually <em>done</em> it, and now he touched his fingers to the front of his lip.</p><p>When? How?</p><p>It was enchantment, yes, sure, but on the inside of his mouth – had Jean-Pierre done it while he was asleep? While he was drunk? Knocked him out?</p><p>His skin was crawling.</p><p>“Aimé—”</p><p>“I need to go,” Aimé said, pulling up his bag again with a shaking hand, feeling pale and drawn and incandescent with rage. “I’ll call Ma in the week.”</p><p>“Aimé!”</p><p>Aimé didn’t even look back at his father, feeling the burn in his eyes, the desperate ache in his chest, and the whole of the ride to the angels’ house, he cycled too hard, so hard that his thighs hurt, his calves hurt, his knees hurt, his hands hurt from gripping the handlebars too hard, and he couldn’t fucking stand it, couldn’t fucking stand <em>himself</em>.</p><p>Boxing, painting, reading, watching <em>Rome</em> or <em>Downton Abbey</em> or whatever the fuck else Jean-Pierre was watching, and the whole time, the <em>whole time</em>—</p><p>And the worst part of it, really, was the part of him that said it was all okay. That was the part of him that had ignored it in the first place, had told him not to think about too deeply, not to dwell on it, because it wouldn’t help, and how would it help? Why would he do it if not because he cared about you? He cares, he cares, he loves you, he doesn’t want you to smoke, he doesn’t want you to die—</p><p>He grit his teeth so hard he could hear them creak.</p><p>He caught his bag as he dropped his bike in the front yard with a clatter on the path, the gravel crunching under his path as he slammed his fist against the door. He had a key – it didn’t matter anyway, because they never fucking locked it – but it felt good, to slam the side of his fist again and again against the wood.</p><p>Jean-Pierre answered, and Aimé opened his mouth to start screaming, to call the angel every fucking name under the son, to shout until his throat bled, but as he stared at l’ange, the breath felt like it was pulled out of his lungs.</p><p>Blood was spattered, thick and red on Jean-Pierre’s face, and although some blood dripped from his already-healed nose and stained his mouth, the majority of it wasn’t Jean-Pierre’s own.</p><p>His white blouse was brown with thick, congealed blood and gore, so that it stuck to his skin, and his trousers were ripped, a cut on his thigh already scabbing over and healing, but blood <em>dripped</em> from him onto his stupid welcome mat printed with the Arc de Triomphe, and hanging loosely from his hand was a rifle, a dagger stuffed through his belt, visibly having been used.</p><p>It was remarkable, how swiftly anger could turn to terror.</p><p>Taking in a shaky, painful breath, feeling his eyes wide, his hands trembling even more at his sides, Aimé got halfway through leaning back with a move to step away, but Jean-Pierre’s mildly surprised face morphed into one of delight.</p><p>“Aimé!” he said joyfully, as though this was normal, as though this was standard, as though it was perfectly natural that he should be covered in the evidence of other people’s murder, and before Aimé could say anything, protest, even breathe, Jean-Pierre kissed him.</p><p>Aimé’s eyes closed, and he tasted someone else’s blood as Jean-Pierre pulled him close.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Bloody</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>The shower ran very hot, and steam filled the bathroom, fogging up the mirrors over the sink and over Jean-Pierre’s vanity table. Aimé didn’t know if it was right to call it a vanity table, really – Jean-Pierre did have a little set of drawers on top of it where he kept his nail polish and the make-up he wore from time to time – mostly lip glosses and eyeliners, but he had costume make-up too. It was just that it <em>wasn’t</em> make-up, for the most part. Jean-Pierre had pulled open the drawers and cabinets underneath the table and explained to Aimé what a lot of the equipment there was for – he had a first aid kit downstairs as well as in Colm’s car, but there were two first aid kits here, one for home use, one for travel. He had gauze and bandages, different drugs, a few neatly packed beakers and litmus papers for different blood tests, syringes…</p><p>Aimé sat on the stool beside the little table, leaning his elbows back on the surface, and he watched Jean-Pierre scrub his hands into his hair, blood running down his body and swirling into the water at the base of the shower.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had his own bathroom – the one at the top of the stairs, Asmodeus and Colm shared, which had a bathtub, but it was lit normally. Jean-Pierre’s bathroom was so brightly lit that the first time Aimé had stepped inside, he’d actually flinched.</p><p>“It is so that I can do surgery,” Jean-Pierre had explained cheerfully when he’d asked about it.</p><p>He’d laughed at the time.</p><p>It didn’t seem as funny right now.</p><p>He kept wiping at his mouth, but he could still taste the blood on his lip, and he hadn’t yet managed to say a word.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had pulled him inside, putting the rifle and the knife on the sheet laid over the counter in the hall, ready, and Aimé had stared as Jean-Pierre had stripped off of his clothes, putting them in a wicker hamper already filled with bloody clothes.</p><p>“So I don’t track too much on the carpets,” he’d said before leading Aimé up the stairs. “You just caught us as we came home – Colm is already in the bath, I think. We left on Saturday after lunch with Bedelia and Padraic – you know George is thinking about engineering schools?”</p><p>The blood had still been streaked all over him, even with his clothes pulled off, and it had been soaked dark and sticky all over him, especially on the backs of his shoulders and on his face, and the gore had still been spattered into his hair. Aimé had tried to breathe enough to say something, but couldn’t manage it, feeling his mouth painfully dry, his lips parting and closing again.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had continued to chatter on as he stepped into the shower and under the hot water, and he was still talking now.</p><p>“You don’t need to worry about the cut,” he said – Aimé had been looking down at his thigh, where the cut showed. “I told you I heal very quickly – it is already healing. See, the scab is already coming away.”</p><p>Aimé nodded silently.</p><p>He’d offered no explanation.</p><p>Perhaps, to Jean-Pierre, it was as obvious as could be why he should answer the door covered in blood and guts, and Aimé couldn’t work past it, couldn’t make his mouth work, couldn’t, couldn’t…</p><p>The bathroom door opened, and Colm stood in the doorway, holding a towel loosely over his size. He was naked and still wet from his bath, not all of the blood completely washed off of him.</p><p>“Excuse me, Aimé,” he said, and Aimé stood to his feet, leaning back against the mirrored wall on the other side, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Colm peeled the towel back from his side, showing the blood sticking to it, and Aimé watched as he pulled open one of Jean-Pierre’s drawers, rifling through for the long tweezers.</p><p>Aimé closed his eyes as Colm slid them into the little wound with a wet sound, and he tried to concentrate on the sound of the shower spray instead of the noise of the tweezers in the wound, of Colm’s sharp, hissed little noise of pain before he heard the clink of metal onto the dish Jean-Pierre usually kept for used q-tips and cotton pads.</p><p>The bullet was smaller than he expected, looking like it had been crushed somehow, and Colm glanced up at him.</p><p>“What you think of as a bullet is a whole cartridge,” Colm explained, leaning back against the vanity table and running one of Jean-Pierre’s antiseptic wet wipes over his skin, even though it made him grit his own teeth. “The bit at the front, the tip, is the only bit that actually gets shot forward – the base of it has the primer, which acts like the fuse, and then the bulk of the cartridge is filled with fuel that serves as a propellant. When you pull the trigger on a gun, it sets off the primer, which lights the propellant, and it’s the force of that propellant giving off gas as it burns that launches the bullet from the chamber at a velocity enough to do some injury.” He sighed, pressing down on the side of his torso, and Aimé watched the little wound continue to heal before his eyes, the flesh knitting slowly together.</p><p>“What did it hit?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Colm raised his eyebrows, tilting his head.</p><p>“The bullet. Why didn’t it go through the other side?”</p><p>“Well, this is actually the exit wound,” Colm said. He gestured to a pink spot on the other side of his torso, where the scab was already coming away in little pieces, “This is where it entered. It almost exited, but then I tried to heal around it, forcing it back further in, so then I tried to dig it out with my finge—”</p><p>Aimé was glad that the toilet was right next to him, because it meant he didn’t vomit anywhere else.</p><p>“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Jean-Pierre said, turning off the shower and beginning to wring out his hair.</p><p>“I thought he was okay,” Colm said, reaching out to touch him, and Aimé let out a low, burbled noise of relief as Colm took some of the nausea off of him, although it made Colm blink a few times, and when Aimé looked up at him, he looked green. “I thought you were squeamish,” he mumbled, wrinkling his nose.</p><p>“Not squeamish,” Aimé said, leaning out of the way of Colm’s hand. “That’s not why.”</p><p>He was trembling again, he realised, as the immensity of the situation dawned on him in ways he really wished it wouldn’t. He’d known what Colm and Jean-Pierre were, of course, had known they were immortal, had even known that they didn’t look at things the way that humans did, but all at once, now, the reality of it was hitting him, and it…</p><p>Aimé had experienced existential terror before.</p><p>He’d never experienced it quite like this.</p><p>“Will you get my towel for me, Aimé?” Jean-Pierre asked sweetly.</p><p>Aimé was on his feet in an instant.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>It had been a rough job.</p><p>They’d gone out to an isolated property in the South of England, and had initially burglarised the place, moving past the mundie security designs in order to take the children – their primary target had 7, all of them under the age of twelve – off of the property, knocking each of them out and removing them off the campus of the house, and in the process, they’d knocked out every member of domestic staff that didn’t carry a weapon.</p><p>They had <em>tried</em> not to kill security in the initial stages, but that care had not been mutual, although when comparing scores afterward – he and Colm always had score tabulations, and documented the documentation in their respective pocket books – they hadn’t included them in their sums.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had been behind, with Colm taking the lead with his highness – now, the two of them were neck and neck.</p><p>He had been surprised to see Aimé on his doorstep, but pleased, too, and it had been amusing to fee the way Aimé stiffened and then relaxed under Jean-Pierre’s kiss, the way he kept wiping at his own mouth.</p><p>There had been terror in his eyes when Jean-Pierre had come before him, and there was something fascinating about that, something wholly delightful in Aimé looking at him with such <em>fear</em> radiating from him, although for all that fear, he wasn’t pulling away, wasn’t running from him.</p><p>Aimé hadn’t said anything yet.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was waiting quite patiently, interested to hear what he would say, if he would voice his fear at all, but it hadn’t come just yet: he had chopped fruit for Jean-Pierre and set it on a plate for him, and now the two of them sat on the bed eating fruit from the plate.</p><p>A television show Jean-Pierre had picked at random, some sort of documentary, was playing, but Jean-Pierre wasn’t watching it.</p><p>He was watching the rise and fall of Aimé’s chest as Aimé kept his gaze on the television, and then he leaned forward, sliding his hand over Aimé’s chest, in the centre of his breast, pressing down on his sternum, and Aimé’s eyes fluttered closed, his lips quivering.</p><p>“You think I will harm you?” Jean-Pierre asked softly.</p><p>“How many people did you kill?” Aimé asked, keeping his eyes closed, tightly closed, as though he was frightened to open them.</p><p>“This weekend? Twelve.”</p><p>“Twelve,” Aimé repeated slowly, and Jean-Pierre slid closer, sliding his hands over Aimé’s chest, pressing down on his breasts either side, and to his delight, Aimé huffed out a little laugh, grabbing him by the wrists. “This thing about my tits has to stop.”</p><p>“I <em>like</em> them,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé grabbed both of Jean-Pierre’s hands, holding his wrists together and pulling them off of his chest, and he squeezed tightly enough that there was a delightful edge of pain in it, and Jean-Pierre looked down at Aimé, at the uncertain expression in his face, the hesitation. “You’re frightened of me?”</p><p>“Who’d you kill?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre squeezed his sides with his knees.</p><p>“His name was Mark Cuthbert. He mostly dealt in party highs – ecstasy cut with one thing or other.”</p><p>“You killed him because he dealt drugs?”</p><p>“Oh, no,” Jean-Pierre. “He was a human trafficker.”</p><p>Aimé was silent then. “You— Have you— Have you always…?”</p><p>“Since the uprising,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I have killed a great many people in my lifetime.” Aimé’s heart was beating faster beneath him, and Jean-Pierre slid his hands forward. Even with Aimé’s hands gripping his wrists, he didn’t stop Jean-Pierre from putting his hands around his throat, and he squeezed slightly, until Aimé let out a breathless little whimper. “I frighten you.”</p><p>“You scare me fucking shitless,” Aimé said.</p><p>Some of the pleasure faded in the moment. It surprised Jean-Pierre, the way that his delight caught in his chest and evaporated, because Aimé didn’t look only frightened of him, but resigned, somehow, dulled, somehow. Jean-Pierre forced his expression to remain neutral as he relaxed his grim on Aimé’s neck, tapping his thumb against the hollow of his throat. He remembered his nightmare of the past week, the way that he’d woken soaked with sweat and sobbing, the way Aimé had clutched at him as though to protect him from the world at large.</p><p>“I wouldn’t harm you,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I love you.”</p><p>“You love me?” Aimé repeated.</p><p>“This surprises you?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“A little bit,” Aimé said.</p><p>“And why is that?”</p><p>“Because my dad came over before I came around here,” Aimé said lowly, staring in the vicinity of Jean-Pierre’s naked chest instead of meeting his gaze. His voice was hoarse and thick. “Asked what the fuck my new boyfriend had done to my mouth.”</p><p>“Kissed it, no? Or—”</p><p>“The enchantment,” Aimé said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned back. “Ah,” he said softly.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>He’d seen Jean-Pierre do this before, but it didn’t make it any less frightening.</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s small, prim smile became keener, sharper, turning into something more like a smirk; his eyes became clearer, the colour colder; he raised his chin, and all of a sudden, Jean-Pierre seemed that much taller, that much <em>bigger</em> than Aimé was.</p><p>The sound of Aimé’s gulp rang in his own ears.</p><p>“Well?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Well,” Jean-Pierre replied, giving a neat little shrug of his shoulders, sitting up straight where he straddled Aimé’s belly. He was smiling, showing his teeth, and he was looking down at Aimé as though Aimé were something newly fascinating, newly delightful, his fingers tracing a vague pattern over Aimé’s chest that made Aimé at once quake with fear and want to spread his legs wider. “You’re so calm. I thought perhaps you would be angry – like the first time.”</p><p>“I’m angry,” Aimé said, trying to keep his breathing in check. “I’m fucking angry, Jean – I’m <em>pissed</em>. You can’t just, you can’t just <em>do</em> that to someone—”</p><p>“Why not?” Jean-Pierre asked, and he tilted his head to the side in a way that was so entirely inhuman that it actually made Aimé shiver, and based on the way Jean-Pierre pressed his lips together, stifling a giggle, he’d done it on purpose. “You let me.”</p><p>“I didn’t <em>let</em> you,” Aimé said, shoving Jean-Pierre off him and standing to his feet: Jean-Pierre was stood right in front of him in a heartbeat, leaning over him. “I didn’t know you’d <em>done</em> anything.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s smile softened, and he looked down at Aimé for a moment, arching one perfect blond eyebrow. “Didn’t you?” he asked softly.</p><p>It hit Aimé like an actual blow, but Jean-Pierre didn’t let him step back, reaching down and cupping Aimé’s cheek very tenderly, his fingers touching featherlight over the stubble there.</p><p>“You knew,” Jean-Pierre said softly, in almost a whisper. “You are not a fool, Aimé – you knew, and when I told you you were wrong, you knew that I was lying, but you leapt to believe me anyway.”</p><p>“I didn’t,” Aimé said, shaking his head. “I didn’t—”</p><p>“Would you like to start smoking again, Aimé?” Jean-Pierre asked, forcing Aimé to look up, to meet his gaze. “Could you control yourself without my work to assist you?”</p><p>Aimé swallowed hard, clenching his hands down at his sides, and Jean-Pierre held his face between his palms, looking down at him with his clear, bright eyes, his sweet smile and it’s frightening knife-edge. Jean-Pierre had told him he loved him a moment ago, and the worst thing was that Aimé entirely believed him, even though it fucking hurt – he’d never really believed someone loved him before outside of his mother’s family, but it figured that the only person to actually <em>say</em> so would be a monster.</p><p>“Do you hate me, hm?” Jean-Pierre asked in the softest of voices, stroking his hair back from his face. “You said you could never despise me – do you now? Will you leave me? I won’t stop you, you know, if you wish to, Aimé. I will simply ache in your absence.”</p><p>Aimé shook his head, feeling his stomach flip at the very thought of it, and Jean-Pierre leaned closer, brushing their noses against one another, looking into Aimé’s eyes.</p><p>“Are you going to leave me?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>Aimé wanted to say he would. He wanted to say he would leave and never come back, wanted to say that Jean-Pierre was the scum of the earth, that he couldn’t do whatever he wanted to Aimé just because he was human, just because Jean-Pierre was an angel, just because he <em>wanted</em> to.</p><p>“Would you like for me to take the spell away?” Jean-Pierre asked softly. “You have tried to quit smoking in the past, have you not?”</p><p>Aimé inhaled through his nostrils.</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled at him.</p><p>“Are you going to apologise?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre blinked, and then looked down at Aimé with what seemed like real, genuine surprise. “For what?” he asked.</p><p>Aimé let out a breathless, sharp, punched-out sound that eked out of his throat without his meaning to, and Jean-Pierre leaned back, but before he could say anything, say something awful and smug and superior, Aimé dragged him down and started kissing him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre tried to control the kiss, tried to make him pull back, but Aimé shoved him back onto the bed and kissed him harder, pinned Jean-Pierre under his weight as best he could, pinning his wrists down.</p><p>It lasted for—</p><p>Two minutes, maybe.</p><p>Jean-Pierre let Aimé control the kiss, let Aimé imagine, for a hundred and twenty seconds, that he was going to let Aimé top, and then he bit Aimé’s neck so hard he <em>shouted</em>, releasing Jean-Pierre’s hands.</p><p>The choking should have frightened him, somehow, but it was better than ever.</p><p>Later, Jean-Pierre sat beside him on the bed, cross-legged and eating pieces of fruit from the plate Aimé had made up for him, looking down at Aimé where he laid on his back.</p><p>“May I tell you something that I think you will like?” he asked.</p><p>“Sure,” Aimé said. He was still a little dizzy, not from the choking – Jean-Pierre was <em>medicinal</em> about it, knew exactly when to stop in a way no one Aimé had ever been with did, but he supposed that only made sense – but from how hard he’d come, because Jean-Pierre always seemed to want to wring him out after hard conversations.</p><p>“None of my past lovers ever liked to be choked,” Jean-Pierre said. “It is a curious fetish of yours.”</p><p>“I never asked you to choke me.”</p><p>“Not with your words.”</p><p>It made a kind of hot, pooling warmth spread out through his chest, his arms and legs, and Aimé leaned his head back against the pillows, looking up at Jean-Pierre, even as he reached up and touched his throat, feeling where the flesh was sore and stung under his fingers.</p><p>It felt good.</p><p>“I never felt it,” Aimé said quietly. “It’s why I could… I couldn’t <em>feel</em> it. So long as I couldn’t feel it, it wasn’t… Is that part of it? You hid it?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled down at him, shook his head. “You think you would feel a tattoo, once it was laid in your skin?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre reached out, slowly stroking his thumb along Aimé’s bottom lip, and it made Aimé’s eyes drop closed, made him shiver: Jean-Pierre touched him so gently, so gently that the touch was almost ticklish.</p><p>“The circuit of the enchantment runs in line with the pulse of your heart – you would be aware of it no more than you might be aware of your own blood in your veins. It is a complicated enchantment, though – it has specialised symbols for nicotine, but for tar, also; it makes you vomit, but safely. I have modified it for my own uses but when it was first used in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, its purpose was to make its victims vomit until their organs exited their mouths.”</p><p>Aimé opened his eyes. “Jesus,” he said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed. “It is very violent, yes. Would you like for me to show you? I will teach you any enchantment you want.”</p><p>Aimé bit his lip, worrying it under his teeth for a moment, but then he nodded, and as he pulled himself up, Jean-Pierre pulled a notebook and a pen from the side table, smoothly, easily drawing symbols on a piece of paper, explaining their function, their purpose.</p><p>“I should hate you,” Aimé said. “You’re a murderer, and I should hate you.”</p><p>“I am very grateful that you don’t,” was the mildly-spoken reply, and it made Aimé’s whole chest pang in a way it really shouldn’t. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at the soft, sweet look on Jean-Pierre’s pretty face, so he looked at the page instead.</p><p>“Show me another one,” he said in a quiet voice.</p><p>Jean-Pierre picked up his pen.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Bright Lights</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>On Tuesday, when Jean-Pierre went off to his lectures, Aimé stayed in the angels house and worked in the yard with Colm between sitting down with his books. There was something familiar about the way, in the angels’ house, there was always work to be done, the easy way Colm, and Asmodeus when he was home, would see that he was idle and ask him to come with help or one thing or another.</p><p>It reminded him of work on the vineyard.</p><p>It wasn’t quite the same, no – the weather was colder here, and the work was more grateful, but there was something nice, comforting, in the way that Asmodeus and Colm always trusted him to do something, and taught him how to do it if he didn’t know, got him to actually do stuff with his hands.</p><p>It was easier here to do things than to <em>not</em> do them, and that was how it had felt in Montauban – motion felt easier than stagnation, and he was genuinely grateful.</p><p>“You doing anything?” Colm asked at ten or so, and Aimé looked up from his book. He hadn’t been seriously studying it, just rereading, so he marked his page and shook his head.</p><p>“I’ve got time,” he said, and pulled on his jumper before following Colm outside. It was a cold day, but not wet, and Aimé looked up at the anemic grey skies, his hands loosely in his pocket.</p><p>“I need to bring in the last of the apples and pears,” Colm said, “before the cold snap comes.”</p><p>“Going to make cider?”</p><p>Colm glanced at him, looking thoughtful as he pulled a wood barrel out from where it had been pressed against the side of the house. “We have enough, you think?”</p><p>That was like Montauban too, the way the angels looked at him like his suggestions were worth listening to, like he might know as much as they did, even though Aimé knew damn well he didn’t know shit about anything. That was nice – he liked that.</p><p>Looking up at the big apple tree that dominated one side of the back yard, although he’d noticed, for whatever reason, that its shadow never seemed to land on Colm’s greenhouse. There were a great many apples still on the tree – at least enough to half-fill Colm’s barrel, Aimé thought, or fill it three quarters.</p><p>“I think so. You know how?”</p><p>“We used to make it every year,” Colm said softly, “the village I lived in. I never used to be involved – I’d help collect the apples if I was on land, and the women would make it. But we can learn. There’s space for it in the cellar – I’ll ask around and see where I can get a press. You want to help me get them down?”</p><p>“You gonna climb that tree?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>Aimé scoffed. “No.”</p><p>Colm laughed at him, but he held up his hands, giving Aimé a good-natured smile, and he pulled a netted bag from inside the barrel, slinging it over his arm like a satchel.</p><p>“Those potatoes ready to come up?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“The roosters? No, not yet, they need another half a week – you can start on the weeds, if you don’t mind.”</p><p>There was something cathartic about being on your knees in the dirt, regardless of what the soil felt like. It was good earth, Colm said, but Aimé was vaguely curious as to whether it had been good earth before the angels had arrived, because in the street, no one’s flowers grew so well as Colm’s vegetables grew, but it was hard to tell what was magic and what was being a green thumb, when you didn’t know much about the intersection yourself.</p><p>As Colm clambered through the branches of the big apple tree, tugging apples loose and dropping them into his bag, not fussing and fidgeting over pockmarks or beak marks on the apples like Aimé had known some people to, Aimé worked on his hands and knees, dragging the weeds out from in amongst the vegetable beds.</p><p>“Don’t you have enchantments for weeds?” he asked as Colm emptied his bag into the barrel, and Colm looked thoughtful for a moment before he started hauling himself up into the tree again. His shirt rode up, and Aimé saw the shiny, slick burn scars on his side, and for the first time, he almost wanted to ask about them.</p><p>“We have enchantments for pests,” Colm said. “But that’s… It’s complicated stuff – so Jean and De are pretty great between them, they can do pretty subtle stuff. Our fence will let hedgehogs and badgers through, for example, but not squirrels, not rats, nor mice – that’s fucking fiddly, and I know it is, ‘cause it took Jean-Pierre <em>decades</em> to get it just right, and he had to do a lot of tweaking coming home to Ireland, too. We’ve been living in the US the past while, and it’s different there – we still want to keep out rats, sure, but there’s also bigger omnivorous mammals we want to keep out, like possums or racoons, but we still like for cats and dogs to be able to come in and out.”</p><p>Colm spoke very casually for a man currently shimmying upside-down from a tree branch that barely looked thick enough to support his weight, but Aimé decided not to comment on this as Colm crossed his legs over the beam’s thickness and started to reach for apples with his arms, supporting himself with abs of what could only be made of galvanized steel.</p><p>“A lot of the enchantment symbols are either hyper specific – for a single animal that you have to somehow mark – or more vague – animals with this many legs or that have this speed of heartbeat or this sort of diet. You can’t really explain to an enchantment what makes an animal good to have in the garden and what makes it bad – and we’ve given up trying to keep birds out entirely, because the last time Jean really tried, a friend of ours, Doros, tried to visit and couldn’t cross the threshold, and he was another winged angel.”</p><p>Aimé sniggered, and Colm grinned, moving further along the branch.</p><p>“Glad you find it funny,” he muttered. “Doros fucking didn’t.”</p><p>“I’d guess insects are even harder,” Aimé said.</p><p>“They are,” Colm agreed. “You see we have bug hotels scattered around the place, and I like to encourage bees in and out, butterflies, et cetera. That’s part of why we replaced the ivy with honeysuckle and why I have so many beds of flowers at the garden edges – those pollinators are very useful to us, and they keep the plants healthy. We use the flowers too, of course, in tea or whatever else – De can actually make an incredible ice cream with the hibiscus – but it’s hard to put into symbols the difference between a beetle or a caterpillar that’ll munch away on the lettuces, and a butterfly or a bee that will just take nectar and pollen. <em>Especially</em> because a lot of individual insects are both harmful and helpful to the garden – it just depends on what stage of their life they’re at.”</p><p>“Now you’re sounding like a philosopher,” Aimé said, and Colm laughed. He made it look easy, the way he hung down from the branch by one hooked leg for a moment, twisting to turn and shimmy the other way on the branch before leaning against the main body of the trunk and reaching higher. “Colm.”</p><p>“Aimé?”</p><p>“You wash those bloody clothes?”</p><p>Colm didn’t flinch at the question, or even look at him – his tone remained casual, although he wasn’t at all trying to shy away from the question. “Not just yet, they’re soaking at the moment – I was pretty tired last night and didn’t wash them right away. I still need to scrub at them. I know Jean already cleaned our rifles and blades and put them away last night after you’d fallen asleep, but he left our boots to soak too.”</p><p>“The rifles got blood on them?”</p><p>“A little, from our hands,” Colm said. “I had a handgun as well – Jean-Pierre doesn’t like to use pistols, though, because his hands are a little too delicate for it. He prefers a rifle he can brace properly. Mostly he was just cleaning them before we put them away – you have to clean the barrel and the mechanism of residue, make sure they run smoothly later on. You ever fire a gun?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“You want to? I’m gonna drive out to the allotment after this, check on the plants there, if you want to come along. I can bring a rifle too.”</p><p>Aimé’s grandmother had had a gun. He remembered that – she’d kept it in a locked cabinet in the kitchen, unloaded. Every year she’d shoot ducks during the season, but once, when he’d been a little boy and him and his mother had been on the vineyard, a wild boar had strayed onto the property, and one of his cousins had had to haul his arse up an oak tree.</p><p>His grandmother had fired off two warning shots before she’d actually shot at the boar itself, and even with four bullets in its side, it had just kept running. It had dropped dead in the village, and one of their gendarmes had hauled it into the butcher on a trailer on the back of his motorbike, and they’d eaten the steaks the butcher had sent them later in the week.</p><p>“No boar in Dublin,” Colm said. He was looking directly at Aimé now as he emptied his apples into the barrel, and for a moment he leaned his elbows on it, looking at Aimé seriously, his eyebrows raised.</p><p>“Can Jean do that?” Aimé ask. “Skim the thoughts off the top of someone’s head?”</p><p>“Oh, I like that imagery,” Colm said. “Like cream on the top of a bucket of milk.”</p><p>“Ugh,” Aimé said, and Colm laughed, rapping his knuckles on the barrel.</p><p>His expression got more serious, then, a little more thoughtful, and he said, “He can – he could. Jean gets a little overtired with other people’s emotions. He draws an enchantment on himself to keep it dampened down most of the time.”</p><p>“That doesn’t sound like him,” Aimé said. “Giving up the upper hand.”</p><p>“It doesn’t, does it?” Colm asked, his voice quiet. His expression was fond, but his tone wasn’t, exactly. He shrugged his shoulders, and then said, “He didn’t use to dampen it down as much as he does now. He was in prison for a while in the forties, solitary confinement, and he had a bad experience with it getting out again. Now he keeps it tabbed down almost all the time.”</p><p>Aimé tried to imagine Jean-Pierre being in prison, tried to imagine him in solitary confinement, and it didn’t really work in his head – Jean-Pierre didn’t even like to be in a room on his own, would come downstairs and sleep in the living room with Aimé and Colm if Aimé was taking too long to come to bed. He wondered if he’d been like that <em>before</em> prison – and then wondered if it was fucking crazy that he wondered that before wondering what he’d been in for.</p><p>“I’ll help on the allotment,” Aimé said. “But I don’t, um. I don’t want to touch a gun.”</p><p>“Scared?” Colm asked.</p><p>His grandmother’s gun had frightened him, he thought, in a vague way. It had been frightening that they had something in the house that had to be kept locked away, that was too dangerous to be out in the open – as a child, he’d never quite understood the difference between a gun and a knife, why one had to be locked away and the other left on the countertop, and he’d created vivid ideas in his head of what a gun could do to a person, to an animal, before he’d seen it in his grandmother’s hands.</p><p>He knew it was silly.</p><p>People used guns all the time – they used them to hunt, they used them to defend themselves. People should be able to have guns, he thought, so long as they were trained to use them, and so long as they weren’t going out and killing people with them.</p><p>Like Colm and Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“I don’t think so,” Aimé said. “But I just… I don’t know. I don’t want to.”</p><p>Colm was watching him, Aimé realised after a moment, quiet, expectant, and Aimé looked up and he met his gaze. “You ever killed anything before, Aimé?” Colm asked when Aimé looked at him.</p><p>“No,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Never even tried?” Colm asked. He was smiling slightly, and there was nothing mocking in the smile, Aimé didn’t think, but there was something uncomfortable in it, something that made his skin crawl. “Not even a spider, or a fly?”</p><p>“No,” Aimé said. “There’s only one living thing I’ve tried to kill, and other people intervened. You want to tell me why you’re smiling like a creep?”</p><p>“Oh, nothing,” Colm murmured. “It’s just rare to meet an atheist that believes in the sanctity of life like you.”</p><p>Aimé pulled a face, shaking his head. That wasn’t it. He didn’t think so, anyway – he’d never liked the idea of killing anything, didn’t even like to think too hard about where meat came from, really, tried to put it out of his mind. He thought eating meat was fine, he did, it was just…</p><p>He didn’t want to kill anything. Not <em>himself</em>. It wasn’t about sanctity, it was just…</p><p>Colm grinned at him, and hauled himself up into the tree again.</p><p>Aimé focused on the weeding for a while.</p><p>He helped Colm take in the pears off the tree in the front garden – Jean-Pierre and Colm had already taken all of the plums off the other tree, and he knew that they’d frozen some batches of them, and that others were being kept in the cellar.</p><p>He knew things were <em>in</em> the cellar, and he knew that the hatch was in the pantry, but he’d never actually been inside until today.</p><p>Coming down the stairs, he stopped on their stone surface, staring at the stone-floored room he was looking down into, at the stone tables laid out inside it. There were floor-to-ceiling dark wood cabinets against two of the walls, and the other walls were plain stone.</p><p>Axes and heavy weapons hung from the long walls, and against one wall was a row of rifles in a specialised wooden frame. The angels’ bloody clothes were soaking in a steaming barrel of soaped water that had turned a dark pink, and their boots were soaking likewise alongside.</p><p>As Colm stepped through the other door in the cellar, rolling the barrel of apples inside, Aimé followed after him, and he followed Colm’s direction, setting the crate of pears on a particular shelf. It was very cool down here, and he reached out to touch one of the cabinet doors, but Colm stopped his hand.</p><p>“It’s not fruit,” he said. “I keep the nitro down here – cold temperatures are safer for storage.”</p><p>“Nitro,” Aimé repeated uncomprehendingly, and then wrenched his hand back. “<em>Nitroglycerin!</em>?”</p><p> “It’s fine,” Colm said, waving his hand in a nonchalant fashion.</p><p>“No, it’s not!”</p><p>“Temperature is carefully controlled down here,” Colm said as Aimé took several steps back from the cabinets, standing in the open doorway into the other room in the cellar. This part of the cellar was a smaller room – as well as the cabinets on one wall, which now he looked at them were neatly labelled in Colm’s spidery handwriting with a mix of chemical terms, Irish, and distressingly blunt labels in English like <strong>DYNAMITE</strong> in all caps, there were a few other barrels, and here was Asmodeus’ tall rack of wine bottles, separate to the rack he tended to keep ready to go in the pantry.</p><p>The chemical smell on the air he’d put down to Jean-Pierre’s poitín still, but now he inhaled again, he realised it wasn’t just the smell of poitín, but a burnt, metallic scent.</p><p>Aimé looked down at his hand, which he realised was resting on a barrel neatly marked with a label that said <em>Púdar</em>.</p><p>He slowly retracted his hand.</p><p>Despite Colm’s less than comforting assurance as to the strict temperature controls and the strong enchantments writ onto the walls, which Aimé was fairly certain must have some dampening effect on any potential explosive power, the knowledge that for the past several months he’d been living overtop of a cellar filled with explosives was seeping under his skin like a splinter.</p><p>“I like explosives,” Colm said.</p><p>“That does kinda contextualise the scars on your body,” Aimé said blankly, stepping into the—</p><p>Fuck, what, the <em>armoury</em>?</p><p>Colm closed the door to the powder room with a neat little click, and Aimé didn’t look back at him right away, instead looking at the mannequins against one side of the room. He saw Kevlar vests and utility belts packed with knives and medical equipment and ammunition, but on the central mannequin, shined to a polish, was a set of shining gold armour.</p><p>“Is this Jean’s?” Aimé asked, staring at it. It was plate armour, the shimmering gold pieces creating a rounded set of shoulders, a flat breastplate narrowed at the waist, and underneath the greaves and coming up to the neck, he could see chain mail, also made of the same golden metal.</p><p>“You’re really asking if me or De would fit into that?” Colm asked, and Aime reached out, touching the back of his knuckles to the breastplate so that he wouldn’t smudge its polished surface with his fingertips. The metal was slightly warm to the touch, and it made him shiver. “You coming?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé muttered.</p><p>He imagined Jean-Pierre in this golden armour, his hair loose around his shoulders, the sun glinting off it, and he pulled surreptitiously at the waistband of his jeans, adjusting them.</p><p>When he turned, Colm was looking at him in disgust. “<em>Really</em>?” he asked. “The <em>armour</em> does it for you?”</p><p>“It’s your brother that does it for me,” Aimé said.</p><p>“As if that’s not worse,” said Colm, and Aimé laughed, following the angel up the stairs.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>When Aimé had come downstairs in the morning, a ghost of terror had been clinging to him like a dressing gown, and Colm had found it interesting, the way he thought about Jean, felt genuine fear, and yet it didn’t push away any of his other feelings about him: affection, amusement, attraction…</p><p>Jean’s smug aura had been palpable before he’d left for school, but for all the complicated feelings Aimé seemed to have bubbling away under the surface, he didn’t seem that conflicted about <em>Jean</em>.</p><p>It was funny, really.</p><p>Jules had died of old age by the time Jean-Pierre first picked up a rifle, from what Colm knew, but of the boyfriends that had come after, Manolis, Benoit, and Bui had known exactly what Jean-Pierre was; Farhad had never come to know what sort of person Jean-Pierre was, only ever knew him as a medical man; and Rupert…</p><p>Colm had never met Rupert.</p><p>He remembered how Jean-Pierre had been in those years, remembered how sensitive he’d been, how almost everything would make him flinch, how overwhelming everything was for him – and every time Colm had spoken to him, he’d mentioned Rupert as something comforting, sweet.</p><p>Colm had got the impression that Rupert was simple, somehow, and that had to be the case, or he wouldn’t have been crowned right in front of Jean-Pierre and expect to walk away with crown and angel both.</p><p>But nonetheless, it seemed to Colm that most of Jean’s boyfriends had known what Jean was and <em>liked</em> it, had supported it, or had been ignorant to it and never known – none of them, so far, had come to find out what Jean really was, and been like Aimé, been frightened, been uncertain.</p><p>It was interesting.</p><p>Colm hadn’t expected for Aimé to have so many actual beliefs buried in his sarcastic soul.</p><p>“You smoke weed?” Colm asked.</p><p>“Sometimes,” Aimé said. “Coke was more my bag.”</p><p>“I’ve never seen you do coke.”</p><p>“Haven’t really needed it,” Aimé said. He seemed to think about it for a moment, his lopsided brow furrowing, and he tilted his head to one side. “I never did it every day, I’ve never been addicted to it like I am nicotine, or whatever. I’d just have it on a night out.”</p><p>“I’ve never seen you on a night out,” Colm said, and Aimé huffed out a low, amused sound.</p><p>There was a rush of feeling in him, a sort of eager anticipation, before he said, “Wait for Halloween, I guess.”</p><p>Colm’s allotment, as he called it, wasn’t actually an allotment. It was really a whole plot of land on its own that Colm had bought in its entirety – when he’d bought it, it had had an old, condemned cottage crumbling away at its corner, and in the past few months, he’d restored the cottage into a shed for tools with a hatch going down into the basement, and built a long greenhouse alongside it.</p><p>As Aimé stepped out of the car, he put his hands in his pockets and stared over the big yard, at the rows of cabbages and potatoes and carrots, the squashes, and finally, the pumpkins.</p><p>“Are we going to have these for Halloween?” Aimé asked, leaning down and touching one of the larger of the pumpkins, his fingers brushing over its hard, orange skin.</p><p>“Yeah, but they’re not ready to come up just yet. I’ll take these up in a few days, on the twenty-ninth – Jean will want to pick one to carve, and you can pick one yourself, if you like. The rest we’ll give out at the community centre, let the kids do their own carvings and take them home, and I’ll use the left over pumpkin for soup.”</p><p>There was a strange sensation in Aimé as he stood straight again, looking around the plot, at the vegetables both uncovered and in their polytunnel, at the long greenhouse where far more vegetables were growing inside – cucumbers, mostly, but also the chilli peppers and the tomatoes, and all the other crops that needed more light to get by.</p><p>It wasn’t guilt, exactly. It was more a strange sense of confusion, of surprise, like he couldn’t really make sense of what he was looking at.</p><p>“You don’t have to give me a pumpkin,” Aimé said. “I wouldn’t know how to do it, I’ve never carved one before.”</p><p>“You think Jean wouldn’t jump at the chance to teach you?” Colm asked, his hands on his hips, and Aimé turned to glance at him, the hesitance showing on his face. The day was cold and for a moment, sun shone down through a gap in the clouds, which made Aimé lean down slightly, so that the messy fringe of his curls hid his eyes from the bright light. “One for Jean, and one for you too. It doesn’t matter if you’re shit at carving it – we eat the bits you carve and compost what we don’t eat either way.”</p><p>Aimé smiled, and Colm felt a genuine burst of affection for him.</p><p>It wasn’t that he wasn’t ugly.</p><p>Colm had thought he was ugly from the outset, and he thought he was ugly now, but there was something about Aimé’s face, about his uneven mouth and his mismatched eyes, that was growing on him. Maybe it was just that Aimé was smiling now, smiling his lopsided smile, and Colm had never seen that at first.</p><p>“You come out here every day?” Aimé asked softly.</p><p>“Yep,” Colm said. “I help out in some of the community gardens too, but that work isn’t really hard – I do the necessary work out here and on the garden at home, but in the city, most of the time I’m just answering questions and giving advice to people, maybe helping them with awkward stuff, like trellises and canes, or fiddly sowing.”</p><p>“Is that what you do all day?” Aimé asked, again with that strange, not-quite-guilty, empty feeling emanating from him, a kind of blank, heavy bafflement.</p><p>“Uh, sometimes,” Colm said. “I fix things for people – put together furniture, fix plumbing and electrics, set up routers and do a bit of IT troubleshooting for the auld wans that can’t do it themselves, give people lifts, teach people how to do their own repairs, paint walls, it’s… You know. Odd jobs.”</p><p>“Odd jobs,” Aimé repeated, and as Colm led the way into the stone shed, he felt Aimé’s interest deepen. “And do people— They pay you?”</p><p>“Sometimes,” Colm said, shrugging his shoulders. It only figured that that’s where Aimé’s head went, to the money, because where else would it go? “Mostly not, though. I normally get paid in kind – I do a favour for someone, and then I have a favour from them. Trade goods and services for goods and services.”</p><p>Aimé obviously picked something up in Colm’s tone because he frowned, scrunching his nose up slightly, and looked at him in bafflement. “You have something against money?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“I don’t like how it can be tracked,” Colm said. “If I take a bag of tomatoes and two heads of cauliflower, and say, a crate of apples, into Ruadhrí G’s and give them over to him, and take home a carton of eggs and some lamb chops and whatever, there’s no receipt, no VAT, nothing. Just goods for goods.”</p><p>“Jean-Pierre thinks taxes should be high,” Aimé said slowly, “but you… think taxes should be low?”</p><p>“It’s not taxes I’ve got an issue with exactly,” Colm said, kicking aside the rug in the shed and pulling up the hatch, descending the stairs with Aimé behind him. “I s’pose I just don’t like government oversight. I don’t want some cunt in an office being able to scroll through his computer and know what we’re eating and drinking, or where we buy our clothes, and follow us around based on our debit cards. I pay for everything I pay for in cash, but whenever I buy groceries I get them from lads I know in the witches’ market, where I can have orders down and swap for what we want.”</p><p>Colm realised that Aimé wasn’t paying attention, and he looked up at Aimé where he was standing on the stairs.</p><p>“You said you smoked weed,” Colm said, after about a minute of feeling the surprise and horror radiate from Aimé like waves of heat.</p><p>“Yeah, Colm, but smoking a joint from time to time doesn’t mean I’ve ever been in an industrial fucking grow room,” Aimé said. “<em>Christ</em>.”</p><p>“This isn’t industrial,” Colm said. He put his hands on his hips again, looking out over the rows of cannabis plants on each table, although Aimé winced a little at the light, and Colm frowned at the twinge of pain he felt, quickly grabbing a set of sunglasses out of one of the tool drawers to the side of the room and handing them over to him.</p><p>Aimé put them on, and although he relaxed, he was squinting a little.</p><p>“You okay?” Colm asked. “You’re normally okay with the greenhouse lights, but these ones are stronger. Headache?”</p><p>“I’m okay,” Aimé said, shaking his head. “Do you— Do you sell this?”</p><p>“About half of it, yeah,” Colm said. “The rest I trade here and there, or put aside for friends.”</p><p>Aimé stepped slowly into the room, down the rows of plants, looking at each of them in interest. “You know this is illegal, right?”</p><p>“You think I care about that?” Colm asked. “Besides, it’s only mundie law that has cannabis criminalised – magical law doesn’t have a problem with it.” Colm watched Aimé for a second and then asked, because he thought it might be funny, “You want to know how many cops I’ve killed in my life?”</p><p>Aimé opened his mouth. Closed it. Made eye contact with Colm. Looked away. “No,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “No, I don’t think so.” The funniest thing was, Aimé didn’t feel scared in the least. Overwhelmed, disapproving, still confused – but not frightened.</p><p>“You’re a funny fucking guy, Aimé,” Colm said.</p><p>“Thanks,” Aimé said without enthusiasm, and came to a stop at the end of the basement Colm had built, staring at the table that was separate from the cannabis plants, but still kept under grow lamps, taller than Aimé and Colm were and towering over them a little, were Jean-Pierre’s pitaya plants.</p><p>Aimé reached out, touching one of the bright pink fruits at the end of one of the succulent’s arms, touching it, and then he turned back to Colm. “Dragon fruit, he asked?”</p><p>Colm spread his hands, and shrugged his shoulders. “The things we do for love, lad,” Colm said.</p><p>Aimé started to laugh, then, and it was a sweet laugh, a laugh full of warmth, and for the first time, looking at him, he really seemed like his own person, not just Jean-Pierre’s current hobby, and not just an alcoholic punching bag filled with daddy issues, either.</p><p>“Do you hate me?” Aimé asked. “You and De?”</p><p>It took Colm by such surprise that he laughed. “The fuck gives you that idea?”</p><p>“I’d hate me,” Aimé said. “If I had a brother like Jean-Pierre, and he took up with someone like me.”</p><p>“Don’t get me wrong, Aimé,” Colm murmured, his hands in his pockets, his lips pressed together as he considered how to respond, “I think you’re kind of a scumbag. “But you’ve realised by now what kind of man my brother is, right? I wouldn’t fucking wish him on anyone.”</p><p>“How long have you known Jean-Pierre?”</p><p>“Two hundred nears or so,” Colm said softly. “We Fell the same day, you know – April 22<sup>nd</sup>, 1732. Me, Jean-Pierre, and another winged angel, Benedictine, you’ll meet her at Christmas. We Fell on the same day – hit the earth at the same time, if you believe Asmodeus. At the same time he was hauling me out of the Atlantic, Jean-Pierre was lying on his back in a wheatfield in Chartres, and Benedictine was sitting at the base of a big tree with a hutia in her lap.”</p><p>“A hutia?” Aimé repeated.</p><p>“It’s a big rodent. She fucking loves them. She has that in common with Jean.”</p><p>It took him a second. Colm could see his little frown, his furrowed brow, as he tugged one of the dragon fruit of the tree, but then he abruptly froze up, and turned back to Colm. “<em>Hey.”</em></p><p>They worked on the allotment for a few hours before they went home, packing away what needed to be harvested into crates to bring it into the church in town, but they didn’t stick around. Aimé had made to get out of the car and come into the church with him, but Colm had waved him off – he’d kept the sunglasses on the whole time, and when Colm had experimentally turned the radio on at the highest volume, Aimé had nearly jolted all the way across the car with the pain the sound sent through him.</p><p>“You want help with anything else?” Aimé asked as they crossed over the threshold into the house.</p><p>“Nah,” Colm said. “Mr Delaney up the street’s got car trouble, asked me to have a look at it, and no offence, but you won’t be any help.”</p><p>“No offence taken, I wouldn’t be,” Aimé said, and with a slight squint of his eyes as Colm shut the door, he pulled the sunglasses off.</p><p>“You know where the paracetamol is,” Colm said. “Maybe take a nap.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé muttered. He got all the way to the top of the landing before he stopped for a moment, rubbing at his sore neck, like it had only just occurred to him, and then glanced back at Colm. “Thanks,” he said.</p><p>“Ná habair é,” Colm said, and went into the other room for his tools.</p><p><strong>COLM, 14:22: Your boy have headaches often? </strong> </p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE, 14:23: Only when hungover. Is he running a fever?</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>COLM, 14:23: Don’t think so. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE, 14:23: Hm. </strong>
</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>He’d gone to bed very early last night, because Colm and Jean-Pierre had been watching some animated film with a lot of flashing lights, and although Colm had made to change the movie over twice, Aimé had been able to tell that he and Jean were enjoying it, and he’d insisted they leave it on.</p><p>The sleep hadn’t helped much.</p><p>Nausea was washing over him in waves, and he’d woken up twice to be sick – Jean-Pierre had pulled the curtains right across the windows, drawing a few arcane symbols on the fabric to transform them into complete blackout curtains, because even the mild light from the bathroom made his head hurt.</p><p>At seven AM, and then at eleven, Jean-Pierre took his temperature, sliding the thermometer neatly under his tongue before examining it.</p><p>It didn’t occur to Aimé, lying on his side in misery as Jean-Pierre sat on the other side of the room, his face barely illuminated by the turned-down brightness of his phone screen, that Jean-Pierre hadn’t gone to class, until he woke from a vague nap to the sound of Jean-Pierre talking on the phone.</p><p>“… the flu, no, his temperature is normal, his sinuses and chest are clear. It’s just a migraine, but it’s quite severe, and I’d rather not leave him alone – I’ve sent you my assignments due on the weekend, and I’m happy to sit the in-class tests at your convenience. You know I know the material. Of course. Ouais. Okay, slán. You’re awake, Aimé?”</p><p>“This is a migraine?” Aimé asked hoarsely, and Jean-Pierre slowly climbed onto the bed, putting his phone aside. Before he answered, he brought a mug of tea up to Aimé’s mouth and made him drink a little of it.</p><p>“Yes. You have had headaches like this before?”</p><p>“A few times the past few years. I thought they were just headaches.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre stroked his fingers through Aimé’s hair, very gently, looking down at him. “This was after you were hospitalised with your jaw?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“After a trauma to the brain, to the head and the neck, a person is far more likely to experience exacerbate symptoms of headache, and of migraine. The photosensitivity was the big red flag. You’ll be alright – darkness and rest for a few days and it shall pass.”</p><p>“What, and you’re just gonna stay and watch me?” He sounded too angry when he asked it, too defensive, but Jean-Pierre didn’t flinch or look angry in return. He began to stroke through Aimé’s hair with firmer motions, gently massaging his throbbing scalp, and it genuinely did give him a small amount of relief, made him hiss and close his eyes.</p><p>“I do not think the world will end if I nurse you these next few days,” Jean-Pierre whispered.</p><p>“It’s definitely a migraine?” Aimé asked. “You didn’t poison me this time?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre chuckled, cupping his cheek. “Désolé, my darling, but no poison this time. I will send a doctor’s note for your lecturer tomorrow if the migraine lingers so long.”</p><p>Aimé slowly moved to lay his head in Jean-Pierre’s lap, and Jean-Pierre put his fingers in Aimé’s hair, beginning to massage his scalp in smooth, easy movements – he obviously knew exactly what spots to press on and palpate, because it felt <em>incredible</em>, and Aimé felt himself go boneless across Jean’s muscular thighs, wrapping his arms loosely around l’ange’s middle.</p><p>“I forgot you could do that,” Aimé said.</p><p>“The benefit to our relationship,” Jean-Pierre said mildly. “You need never pay for medical treatment again.”</p><p>“It’s not the only benefit,” Aimé said. “I have my face buried in another of the big pros right now.” He breathed heavily out through his mouth, and Jean-Pierre squirmed and giggled, shoving Aimé in the head and pushing his face out from Jean-Pierre’s pyjamaed crotch.</p><p>It made Aimé’s head throb, but he supposed he did deserve it, and Jean-Pierre settled a pillow in his lap for Aimé to lay his head back on, tucking the blanket more solidly around him.</p><p>Aimé couldn’t really get his head around it, Jean-Pierre calling into his own lectures and saying he couldn’t make it, sticking with Aimé in a dark room, doing nothing but sit in silence all day with him, just so, what, Aimé didn’t have to be alone? The idea made Aimé’s eyes sting. It didn’t make <em>sense</em>. “Will you massage my ears too?”  he asked.</p><p>“Anything you want,” Jean-Pierre promised him.</p><p>Aimé wondered, feeling as though he was on the verge of some ground breaking discovery, if that was true.</p><p>“Does it get you off? Taking care of me when I’m sick?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre thought about the question, humming.</p><p>“Your vulnerability is appealing,” Jean-Pierre admitted, “but you are vulnerable whether you have a migraine or not. I hope you will forgive me for saying I do not find you particularly appealing in this moment. But it is very lonely to be in one’s sickbed. I would not have you lonely, Aimé. Alone, if you wished it, but never lonely.”</p><p>“Because you love me?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre. “Because I love you.”</p><p>Aimé laid like that, Jean-Pierre massaging his scalp and his neck and his shoulders, for a long time. It was the longest time, Aimé thought, anyone had ever held him like this for something other than sex.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Carving Pumpkins</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>The whole of Wednesday, Jean-Pierre lingered with Aimé in the dark, making very little noise. Most of the time, Aimé rested with his head on a pillow in Jean-Pierre’s lap, and Jean-Pierre pressed on certain parts of his head. The pain didn’t disappear, but after a while of Jean-Pierre working on him, the pain did fade somewhat, and he could almost forget it until he had to get up to piss, and the nausea came back very strongly.</p><p>It was funny, watching Jean-Pierre.</p><p>He didn’t look concerned, didn’t look super worried, but as soon as Aimé asked him for anything – another blanket, to get him a drink or something to eat, to read to him, to shut the curtains more, he was up in a heartbeat.</p><p>It was still a migraine – apparently, and it wasn’t that Aimé didn’t believe him, but he didn’t much like the idea, either – but there was something intoxicating about having Jean-Pierre’s full attention, about having Jean-Pierre blow everything off to take care of him.</p><p>He sent a doctor’s note into Aimé’s lecturer on Thursday for two days, and although Aimé felt better on Friday, more than well enough to go in again, with the pain and the photosensitivity gone, Jean-Pierre insisted he stay home and relax himself, that he not go in and put any undue strain on his head.</p><p>Colm had left to work on the allotment earlier that morning, and Aimé had watched as he’d stacked up sufficient empty crates to take along – he had a lot of stuff that was ready to pull up and donate around the place, and he’d said to Jean about bringing vegetables home for the week.</p><p>Aimé was wrapped in a duvet on the bed, sitting cross-legged with a book in his lap. He’d been reading all day.</p><p>Jean had asked him if there were any particular books he’d wanted to read, and he’d gone downstairs to pick the book he’d wanted out of Aimé’s backpack. When Aimé had made an absent-minded complaint about having to look up Foucault on a PDF, Jean-Pierre had blinked at him, and asked if he minded reading Foucault in the original instead of in translation, and when Aimé had quoted things at him, he’d been able to find the right place in his books.</p><p>They were covered all over in annotations, Jean-Pierre’s books – Aimé had noticed that he had a lot of them, that most of them were about liberal philosophy and social theory, the ones that weren’t about history, but he’d never seen him read anything except for his medical texts.</p><p>Every page he looked at, paging through a yellowed, decades-old copy of Histoire de la folie, the monograph printed on its own and fastened haphazardly together with metal clips older than Aimé’s parents, was annotated in French and Latin, in Jean-Pierre’s handwriting, but there was other handwriting too – Aimé couldn’t read Farsi or Arabic, but he recognised Asmodeus’ neat, perfect handwriting, and there was a square, tiny script on some of the pages in English – Farhad’s handwriting, Asmodeus thought, because the same ink showed in what must have been Farsi beside some of Asmodeus’ annotations.</p><p>“You write on all your books like this?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre glanced at him from where he was sat at his desk, typing rapidly. He’d been quiet all day, and yesterday too – he’d been focusing on Aimé, but Aimé was aware that he was tender, was pretty sure that the bad dreams had been continuing this week.</p><p>“Most of them,” Jean-Pierre said, giving him a small smile. “Most of the books I own, I have read many times, and studied them for speeches, for my own essays. But that monograph, and some of the others, Asmodeus would obtain editions for me as he travelled and read them, annotate them, before he sent them to me.”</p><p>“That’s the Arabic, right?”</p><p>“His style of writing has remained largely unchanged since the seventh century, if certain of my siblings are to be believed,” Jean-Pierre murmured, his lips shifting into a small, fond smile. “My brother is a traditionalist.”</p><p>Traditional sounded about right for Asmodeus – he never looked at a TV, didn’t own a phone or a computer, and even now, although he was travelling wherever, Colm and Jean-Pierre had no idea where he was unless he called them from someone else’s phone. The uncertainty of it didn’t seem to bother Colm and Jean-Pierre, but it bothered Aimé, a little.</p><p>It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d really miss De, when he left, but he did.</p><p>“He like Foucault?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, showing his teeth. He was beautiful like this – he wasn’t trying to be beautiful, was dressed in a pair of Aimé’s pyjama bottoms and one of Colm’s jumpers, and his hair was tied up with a ribbon in a loose, messy bun. He always wore ribbons in his hair, like he’d never heard of a hair band. Now, he was slouching back slightly in his chair, one arm curled loosely back over the chair.</p><p>“It is not always easy to tell,” Jean-Pierre said. “He has parodied Foucault significantly in our conversations, if I ever do quote him in a speech or similar. But you know him to be greatly concerned with liberty, in one way or another.”</p><p>Earlier, when Aimé had asked him, Jean-Pierre had walked to the corner shop for him and bought him some biscuits just because Aimé had asked if they had any left, hadn’t even hesitated, hadn’t even thought about it, had just asked what brand Aimé wanted and put on his coat.</p><p>It had been—</p><p>Sweet, yeah, definitely sweet. Unexpected.</p><p>Jean-Pierre kept jumping to do anything Aimé asked for, ran to make him more coffee, get him the books he wanted, more blankets, turn down the heat. Aimé had barely lifted a finger since his migraine had hit.</p><p>It felt unbelievable, somehow, dream-like.</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre turned around from his laptop. “Ouais?”</p><p>“Would you, uh… Would you make me something for lunch?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled at him: it was a soft, warm beam, gentle, indulgent, and immediately Jean-Pierre was on his feet, putting his slippers on. “You would like more coffee also?”</p><p>“Do you mind?”</p><p>“Not at all,” Jean-Pierre said, leaning and cupping Aimé’s cheek, pressing their lips together, and Aimé watched him as he stepped out of the room, and then looked back at the monograph in his lap.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Colm kept the big pumpkins carefully balanced on top of the crate as he brought them into the house, keeping the crate balanced on one hip as he tipped the pumpkins onto the sofa.</p><p>He’d smelled the bacon and eggs frying as he came into the house, and it was a surprise when he saw Jean-Pierre at the hob with a spatula in his hands instead of Aimé.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had a plate on the counter, and Colm could see the bread sitting next to the toaster, could see that Jean was frying tomato as well as the bacon and eggs, and Colm curved one arm around his brother’s shoulder, standing up on his tip-toes to kiss his temple.</p><p>“You want me to do that?” he asked. “I know you don’t like the smell.”</p><p>“I can do it,” Jean-Pierre said. “Would you put the toast in for me please?”</p><p>Upstairs, Aimé was reading – Colm was aware of the familiar concentrated air that exuded from him when he was focused, the way he buried himself in one of his books. Colm had never been a big one for reading himself – it wasn’t that he couldn’t, but he find it hard to concentrate on words on a page, and he preferred TV, and preferred talking to that.</p><p>He put the bread in the toaster, turning it up to where he knew Aimé liked it – almost burnt – and took the lid off the butter dish to let it melt a little more.</p><p>“You want to tell me why you’re at his beck and call just ‘cause he had a migraine?” Colm asked, beginning to pull vegetables out of the crate and pack them into their places in the pantry, and the fridge, where everything had a dedicated drawer and a neat little label in Asmodeus’ handwriting. He liked having everything in its place, even when he wasn’t here to see it. “He was sick the other night – he was okay by yesterday evening. Today? He’s fine. He could’ve come out to the allotment with me today – would’ve been good for him.”</p><p>“He can later in the week,” Jean-Pierre said, flipping over the bacon. “I want to take care of him.”</p><p>“<em>Why</em>?”</p><p>“Because… he does not believe that I will,” Jean-Pierre said, after thinking about it for a moment. Colm took this in. Jean-Pierre didn’t feel like he was being weird or nefarious about anything, and he didn’t at all feel annoyed about what he was doing – there were the familiar feelings, disgust at the smell of the meat and the eggs cooking, fascination with the shiny colour on the egg yolk, but no irritation at having to prepare them, no frustration with Aimé.</p><p>Colm wished Asmodeus was here.</p><p>He liked Aimé, was growing to like him more and more, but it was difficult to follow exactly what Jean-Pierre was doing with him, sometimes – and right now, it seemed like Aimé was almost okay with it.</p><p>“And will you?” Colm asked. “In two weeks? In a month?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre considered the question very carefully as he plucked the toast out of the toaster, beginning to butter it absentmindedly. He was normally shit at buttering bread, all his surgeon’s dexterity going right out of the window so that the knife went through the bread, but Aimé liked it so fucking black and burnt that it was a little too hard for the knife to go through anyway. The two of them were made for each other, if you looked at it like that.</p><p>Colm picked up the bubbling cafetiere, which they never usually used when Asmodeus was out, and poured coffee for Aimé, setting it on the tray with his plate.</p><p>“You think I will become bored with him?” Jean-Pierre asked, looking at Colm thoughtfully, expectantly. “I have never grown bored with a lover before. You think Aimé is different to the others?”</p><p>He did not seem angry about it, nor uncomfortable. He wasn’t embarrassed about it either, or defensive: he was curious, and he asked the question like he trusted Colm’s expectation of his future behaviour more than his own.</p><p>“Not asking if you’ll get bored of having him,” Colm said slowly, watching the way Jean-Pierre cleanly chopped the toast into pieces, arranging it on the plate with the eggs, the bacon, the tomato. “Asking if you’ll get bored of taking care of him.”</p><p>“I’m a doctor,” said Jean. “I’ve been taking care of people all my life.”</p><p>“You’re obfuscating the point.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre drew a symbol on the edge of the plate, and Colm closed his eyes as it flared with the enchantment before dimming again. Nothing complicated – a simple warming charm. Jean-Pierre kept his lips pressed together, looking forward instead of at Colm.</p><p>When he spoke, it was measured, considered, pensive: “It is not, precisely, about taking care of him. It is not that he wants, that he needs, to be taken care of – he is self-sufficient in his way. Dysfunctional, yes, but you see how living with us has aided that dysfunction – even in his own apartment now he cooks, he cleans, he sorts his glass and metal for the recyclage. He does not need for me to coddle him. But he needs to believe that I will.”</p><p>“Why does he need to believe that if you won’t?”</p><p>“I will.”</p><p>Colm arched an eyebrow, unable to contain his scepticism. “Always?”</p><p>“It doesn’t need to be always,” Jean-Pierre said insistently – not aggressively, not like he was pissed off, but like he was frustrated that Colm wasn’t understanding the point. “But this week, yes. To him it is proof that I love him – he needs it.”</p><p>“Huh,” Colm said slowly. “Interesting.”</p><p>“That I care for my lover?”</p><p>“No,” Colm said. “That you understand why he needs it.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre wrinkled his nose, pressing his lips together so that they thinned dramatically, and then he said, in a low, quiet voice, “You are always so willing to believe that I have no feelings whatsoever. You’ve killed as many people as I have – you think it has tainted me?”</p><p>“Coming from a guy who turns his own feelings off.”</p><p>“Not my feelings,” Jean-Pierre said sharply. “Other people’s. You may choose to delve ever and always into the hearts of strangers as you please, but there is no reason I should do the same.”</p><p>“You used to,” Colm reminded him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre went stiff, and he picked up Aimé’s plate.</p><p>“I like him, you know,” Colm said. “Aimé. We all do.”</p><p>“He’s a tremendous prick,” said Jean, not without affection.</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm said. “Birds of a feather and all that.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s stiffness faded enough that he smiled, and Colm watched him as he stepped away to go back upstairs with Aimé’s tray.</p><p>As he fried himself a full Irish for himself – with sausages and beans as well as the tomatoes – he cut a fruit tray up for Jean, and it was ready for him when he came down an hour later for his own lunch.</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned on his shoulder when he saw what he’d done, wrapped his arms loosely around his waist and pressed his cheek against Colm’s upper arm. Upstairs, Colm was dimly aware that the shower was running, and although he hadn’t mentioned it to Jean, he was thinking about grooming Jean-Pierre’s wings.</p><p>Colm felt himself smile even as he leaned and pressed a kiss to the top of Jean’s head. “You still having those nightmares?” Colm asked, despite knowing the answer.</p><p>“No,” Jean lied, despite knowing that he knew. He’d been half-dozing as Aimé had eaten, not long enough to have a really deep dream, but long enough to have one – and a bad enough one that Aimé himself had noticed.</p><p>They hadn’t been quite so bad this week, but Colm had noticed Jean-Pierre shaky over it in the mornings, and he’d woken up once on Wednesday night with a sudden flare of panic from his room, but as he’d lain there, feeling for Jean, he’d felt Jean-Pierre ground himself in the dark of the room, curling himself more about Aimé, soothing himself.</p><p>“You dreamt about Rupert, the other week,” Colm said. “Now you’re dreaming about prison. You think that means something?”</p><p>“Dreams are the machinations of our minds, doing their best to problem solve while we sleep,” Jean-Pierre mumbled. “I don’t think it any deeper than that.”</p><p>“That idiot really loves you, you know.”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said, his expression screwing up. “That’s the point.”</p><p>Colm shook his head. “Pumpkins are ready when you are,” he murmured, and smiled to himself as Jean-Pierre sidled away.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>He was in a low mood when he came back upstairs, even having eaten, but it made him smile to see Aimé naked, sitting on a towel, with a book in his hands, which were dry, although the rest of him glistened with moisture.</p><p>He hadn’t meant to fall asleep earlier – he’d taken a break from studying to sit on the bed with Aimé and pick a little at his tomatoes, which didn’t taste like bacon grease because he’d cooked them in another pan, and he’d laid his head on the pillow beside Aimé, leaning his forehead against Aimé’s upper arm.</p><p>He’d only meant to rest his eyes for a little while – he hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and he’d jolted suddenly awake with a shock when Aimé had got up from the bed to put his plate aside. How Aimé had flinched, too, putting out his hands and hushing him like a spooked horse, saying, “Hey, ange, it’s just me,” so <em>gently</em>.</p><p>“This is signed,” Aimé said, holding up the book. Jean-Pierre glanced to the wall, at the gap between his edition of <em>La Légende des siècles</em> and volume the second of <em>Les Misérables</em>.</p><p>“You think autographs are a novel premise?” he asked, and Aimé released a low, amused sound.</p><p>“He calls you,” he said, tapping one fingernail against the title page, where messy handwriting was scrawled all over, a far longer inscription than Jean-Pierre had needed or asked for, “<em>sublime</em>.”</p><p>“I’m sure he said a great many pleasant things about me,” Jean-Pierre said. “His signature graces several of the volumes I have attributable to him – and several more besides.”</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Aimé,” said Jean.</p><p>There was a bright smile on Aimé’s closed lips, and a sort of sparkle in his eyes. “Did you sleep with Victor Hugo?”</p><p>“Wouldn’t you have?” Jean-Pierre asked, and Aimé fell back on the bed and laughed. Jean-Pierre gently took the book from his hand, setting it aside, and then he climbed on top of Aimé, straddling his thighs and looking down at him, feeling the weight of Aimé’s hands come to rest on his hips.</p><p>“Any of the characters based on you?” Aimé asked. “<em>Ange-</em>olras?”</p><p>“Do you think you’re funny?” Jean-Pierre asked, even as he felt the smile tug at his lips. “If so, it falls to me to tell you you have been misinformed.”</p><p>“Sorry I woke you up earlier,” Aimé said quietly, his voice sober as he slid one of his hands up underneath Jean-Pierre’s blouse and his jumper, his fingers playing over Jean-Pierre’s belly. His hands moved smoothly over the scars there – some time ago, he was almost frightened to touch them.</p><p>“I have been having unpleasant dreams,” Jean-Pierre said quietly.</p><p>“What about?”</p><p>“My once-gaoler.”</p><p>“Colm said you were in prison in the forties.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“What for?”</p><p>“Attempted murder,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “Attempted regicide.”</p><p>“You go back and kill him after?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre chuckled, leaning in and pressing their noses together, letting his fingers creep slowly up Aimé’s face, spidering through his stubble toward his hairline.</p><p>“No,” he murmured. “He yet lives.”</p><p>“Anyone I’d have the trading card for?”</p><p>“I don’t know what that is, but it was Pendragon.”</p><p>“Pendr—” Aimé suddenly sat up, almost dislodging Jean-Pierre from his lap, although he looped his hands around the base of Jean-Pierre’s back to keep him from falling off the bed. “Pendragon? Arthur Pendragon? You tried to <em>kill</em> King Arthur? Jean, he’s in a fucking coma.”</p><p>“You would think that would make him an easier target,” Jean-Pierre said with a moue on his face, preferring this baffled outrage to discussing his actual sentence, and Aimé let out a powerless laugh, reaching up to cup Jean-Pierre’s cheek.</p><p>“You’re fucking crazy,” Aimé said softly, with a reverence that made Jean-Pierre feel warm. “You know that? Who put you in jail? Merlin?”</p><p>“Myrddin,” Jean corrected his pronunciation, but he did not hide his displeasure, and Aimé became graver once again, looking at Jean-Pierre’s face, his thumb stroking gently over his cheek.</p><p>“Let me have a look at your wings,” Aimé said gently. “See if I can’t make you relax a little.”</p><p>“Will you fuck me?”</p><p>“Have I ever said <em>no</em> to fucking you?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé gave him a sceptical look.</p><p>“No,” he said. “I haven’t.”</p><p>“You’ve fallen asleep,” Jean-Pierre pointed out.</p><p>“After fucking you to my own exhaustion? I’m sure I fucking have.” Jean-Pierre smiled, leaning back in Aimé’s lap and stroking his fingers over Aimé’s chest hair, saying nothing, until Aimé said, “What, you want my permission to fuck yourself on me when I’m sleeping, too? I was under the impression you’d do whatever you wanted with me. I think I even told you that you could fuck me to sleep.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Jean-Pierre said, without shame. “But permission is nice to have. Have I permission to fuck you awake, too? Permission, perhaps, to play with you when I have no intention to wake you at all?”</p><p>Aimé’s expression was frozen for barely a moment, his terror a blooming flower, before he said, smooth as butter, “It’s yours.” It was funny, in that – it was the hesitation that made the moment so delightful, that made Jean-Pierre thrill, and he grabbed Aimé by the hair to pull him into a kiss.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Pumpkin carving was even more difficult than he had expected, but also more relaxing than he would ever have believed. Sitting at the kitchen table, one of Colm’s sharpened knives had slid through the top of the pumpkin’s flesh easily, and he’d managed to pry off the lid he’d made, setting it aside.</p><p>There was a catharsis in pulling the flesh out from the inside of the pumpkin – it felt fucking disgusting, wet, squelching and cool under his fingers, but he could put his fingers through the orange web on the inside and tear it out from its roots, dropping it aside into the bowl.</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t.</p><p>Colm had said Jean-Pierre carved his own pumpkins and that he wasn’t interested in doing it, which Aimé believed, but like the princess he was, he had looked to Colm and pouted at his lips and said he didn’t want to touch the insides of the pumpkin, and although he had scowled about it, Colm was neatly scraping the flesh out of the inside of the squash for him anyway, and had orange staining up to his elbows.</p><p>“Shut the fuck up,” Colm said.</p><p>“I didn’t say anything,” said Aimé.</p><p>“Like you needed to.”</p><p>“You’re not doing it neatly enough,” Jean-Pierre said, looking over Colm’s shoulder. “Look, you’re scraping the side, but you’re not taking it all off.” Colm, very slowly, turned to look up at his brother.</p><p>Aimé started laughing, and Colm threw a handful of pumpkin guts at him, which Aimé dodged so that it spattered against the counter side behind him instead.</p><p>“Colm—”</p><p>“Do you want to do it?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Then <em>ta gueule</em>, Jean.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre pressed his lips together, his arms crossing over his chest, and then he settled on the back of the sofa again, watching Colm very critically.</p><p>“How is it, Jean,” Aimé asked, scraping one of the big spoons up the inside of the pumpkin and trying to drag out the last of the roots of the pumpkin guts, smoothing out the inside of orange flesh, “that you’re okay sticking your pretty little hands into a human’s guts, but putting your hands in a pumpkin’s is too much for you?”</p><p>“I never did surgery on corpses,” Jean-Pierre said. “They were never cold when I touched them.”</p><p>“How would it not be worse if it was warm?” Aimé asked, and Colm sniggered, leaning forward to scrape the inside of the pumpkin out.</p><p>He turned the pumpkin around, then, showing the bowl to Jean-Pierre, who gave a little nod of approval and mumbled a thanks as Colm moved into his own chair, beginning to sort through the pumpkin guts, tugging the little seeds out from the rest of the mess and dropping them into a separate bowl.</p><p>“How did you do that so fast?” Aimé asked, and Colm leaned over to look into Aimé’s pumpkin, which was still messy with gutted webbing.</p><p>“Practice,” Colm said. “You’re doing good.”</p><p>For all he’d protested about it, now that Jean-Pierre’s pumpkin had been gutted, he worked quickly with it – Aimé had some edible chalk to mark his sketch on the pumpkin, but Jean-Pierre drew an enchanted one with his fingers, and he used a set of carving knives to work with, quickly stripping away thin strips of flesh away from the pumpkin and laying them on a plate.</p><p>“Shouldn’t you like this more than he does?” Aime asked as he sketched out his silhouette. “Didn’t this start in Ireland?”</p><p>“Scotland too,” Colm murmured, every pumpkin seed making a wet click as it fell into the bowl with the rest. “Cornwall, I think, Somerset. We never did it in my village, but I think as a tradition it might have started later. I don’t mind gutting the pumpkins out – it needs to be done anyway so we can eat them. But I couldn’t do what you two are doing now, carve them – I could maybe do a grin with teeth or something, but not anything better than that.”</p><p>“I assume De is good at it,” Aimé said.</p><p>“De is good at everything,” Jean-Pierre said serenely.</p><p>Aimé didn’t know quite what to make of his mood – he’d cheered up earlier, after Aimé had finished grooming his wings, and the sex had helped too, but he was still quieter than Aimé was used to. He didn’t look all that tired, and he was smiling, but he just seemed… into himself, somehow, like he wasn’t quite with everything else going on.</p><p>It was a relief to see him focus his attention on the pumpkin, but even still…</p><p>“Are we going to get trick-or-treaters?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“It’s D4,” Colm said. “Probably. We won’t be here – we’re going to a Halloween party in the city centre. Doros invited us.”</p><p>“Doros,” Aimé said. “He’s the one Jean locked out by accident once because the wards thought he was a bird.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre sniggered. “He is a very old angel. He has been romantically engaged since he Fell with Aetos Talaria.”</p><p>“Didn’t Aetos buy him off Polymetis?”</p><p>“To hear him tell it,” Jean-Pierre said, almost inside his pumpkin with his scalpel in hand, so that his voice was muffled, “he was wooing him from within the cage.”</p><p>“Am I supposed to know who these people are?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Hermes and Hephaestus,” Colm said.</p><p>“You’re inviting me to a party with fucking gods in attendance?”</p><p>“The fucking gods will be at better parties,” said Colm. “We’ll mostly have the bitchy ones.”</p><p>“Ha,” Aimé said without enthusiasm, and Colm laughed. He knew that there were Hellnistics about, obviously – his dad had been involved with some of them, he knew, for business, and he’d bought wine from Mr Zagre’s stores, but Aimé had never met any of them. He’d heard a lot of them were seven feet tall.</p><p>“Aetos isn’t,” said Colm.</p><p>“Stop <em>doing</em> that,” Aimé said, and they went back to their work, the three of them sitting around the table. It was weird to think of – Aimé wondered if this was what the two of them were used to, back in the 1700s or whenever else, no computers, no music, just tools and vegetables.</p><p>It was—</p><p>It wasn’t boring. He didn’t know if he would call it nice, per se: his hands weren’t used to working with these tools and his wrists ached a little from trying to scrape and drag at the inside of the pumpkin, and the work was surprisingly involved. He was <em>tired</em> – not in a huge way, but there was a genuine fatigue from the work, and it was satisfying, even though his hands were sticky with pumpkin juice.</p><p>He liked it.</p><p>He really did.</p><p>His design wasn’t turning out exactly how he wanted, and he pressed his lips loosely together as he wiped away some of the unneeded chalk, frowning at the face and trying to think about how he’d fixed it, and then he looked to Jean, who had turned his pumpkin around.</p><p>They’d been working for an hour or so, and Jean-Pierre had been working the whole time – Aimé was surprised to see how little he’d actually done.</p><p>He’d only carved out thin slivers of pumpkin around the edges of a scarecrow on a hill, showing the shape of the sack and its straw-stuffed hands suspended on a cross, but it was subtle work – he could almost make out the individual fibres of straw stuck out of the scarecrow’s sleeves, and Jean must have used one of the thin carving tools to make the scarecrow’s face.</p><p>“Huh,” Aimé said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s face fell, and he looked at Aimé, his lips parting. “You dislike it?”</p><p>“No, no, it’s good, it’s really good,” Aimé said. “I just thought it was a bigger design.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned forward, following his gaze and looking at the front of the pumpkin, and then he blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Let me show you.” When the pumpkin burst with light from the inside, shining brightly, Aimé’s jaw dropped, and he stared at the work Jean had done, fascinated.</p><p>He’d done it by carving from the inside, it seemed to Aimé, so that the pumpkin flesh was thinner in some places than in others, and it was extraordinarily subtle: there was a perfect circle around the scarecrow and the hill its cross was settled on, and around it Jean-Pierre had carved bat after bat around the scarecrow in a cloud of flapping wings.</p><p>“Wow,” he said. “How the fuck did you <em>do</em> that?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s cheeks turned pink, and he smiled, pleased with the praise. It was funny, how shy he sometimes got when you complimented him – he liked to be complimented, but he acted so much like he wasn’t expecting it, sometimes, even when he was.</p><p>“Show me yours,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé hesitated for a second, but then turned the pumpkin around.</p><p>Aimé was a good artist. He wasn’t all that precise – there was a reason he preferred to work with oils than pencil and ink – but he was good. Working with pumpkin wasn’t exactly the same as working with canvases, though, and the silhouette he’d carved was clumsy – the young man with the flag in his hand had a bun, and Aimé had carved out his eyes, but they were too large for his face, and too angular, and the nose was barely there at all.</p><p>“Who is it?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>Aimé sighed.</p><p>Colm pointed at the figure’s wings. “It’s obviously meant to be you, you idiot.”</p><p>“But he made me ugly,” Jean-Pierre said, and he said it so plaintively, looking so quietly distraught, that Aimé put his head in his hand, groaning and shaking his head.</p><p>“It’s <em>hard</em>,” Aimé said, and then he put his chin on his hands, looking at Jean. He should have been offended, he supposed, that the prissy bitch across the table from him was insulting his art, but he was right – it didn’t look how he wanted it, and for some reason, he felt affectionate rather than annoyed. “I don’t know how to do what you do.”</p><p>“You carve it,” Jean-Pierre said simply, “until the light shows through as you like it.”</p><p>“I grasped that bit, yeah.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre stood to his feet, and he moved around the table, looking expectantly for Aimé to lean back in his seat, which Aimé did, letting the angel sink down to perch on his knee.</p><p>“I almost do not wish to show you,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Once I teach you, you will soon be better at it than me.”</p><p>“Well, I don’t have to carve next year,” Aimé said, physically fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “I’ll let you do it.”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre said. “Because once I teach you, you can depict me more accurately.”</p><p>Aimé laughed so hard the chair shook underneath them, and he wrapped his arms around the angel’s middle even though Jean fussed at Aimé getting pumpkin juice on his shirtfront, no matter that he was wearing an apron, and had been since he got Colm to carve out the guts for him.</p><p>“What?” Jean demanded petulantly as Aimé wheezed, wiping some of the wetness out of the corner of his eyes. “What is so funny?”</p><p>“Oh, Jean,” Aimé murmured, burying his face against the side of Jean’s shoulder. “I never knew Narcissus had such a hard time choosing between his reflection in the mirror or the water.”</p><p>Colm choked on his tea, and that just made Aimé start laughing again, laughing so hard his ribs hurt and his diaphragm ached, and when he finally managed to ease off, Jean-Pierre was looking down at him not with anger writ on his face, but with a tiny little smile tugging at his lips and a furious blush burning in his cheeks, his eyes shining.</p><p>“You going to kill me in my sleep for this one?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“I would never do that,” Jean told him gravely. “I would meet your eye as I killed you, and tell you why I was doing it.”</p><p>Cold terror ran down his spine, and at the same time, Aimé’s libido – which had been pretty exhausted a few hours ago – flared hopefully back to life.</p><p>“Ugh,” Colm said, and walked outside.</p><p>“Why don’t we start with the pumpkin?” Aimé suggested breathlessly, and Jean-Pierre began by putting his scalpel gently in Aimé’s hand, and showing him precisely how to hold it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Powder</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Aimé had sent in the work he’d missed and so had Jean-Pierre, and Halloween night saw Aimé sitting obediently in the living room as Jean-Pierre kept a loose grip on his chin, applying more make-up to his face.</p><p>“How do I look?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre smiled, continuing to brush grey over Aimé’s cheekbones, making them appear hollowed.</p><p>“Almost dead,” Jean-Pierre said. “Do you think this is funny?”</p><p>“I do,” Aimé said. “And if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have jumped to do my make-up.”</p><p>“Perhaps I just wanted to shave your beard,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and tilted Aimé’s head the other way, powdering the other side.</p><p>Aimé had sat very obediently before, letting Jean-Pierre wet the bristles of his beard with thick shaving foam, and he had shivered as he’d watched Jean-Pierre sharpen the blade of Manolis’ old straight razor. It had been difficult indeed for him not to squirm and shiver as Jean-Pierre had slowly dragged the blade over his skin, taking every dark, curling hair away.</p><p>Aimé looked odd, with no stubble on his cheeks – he did not seem younger, merely strangely unfinished, and the scars at the edges of his jawline were more visible without his facial hair to obfuscate them.</p><p>Jean-Pierre preferred him with a beard, but there had been something very deeply erotic about sitting in Aimé’s lap with a blade against his skin, and although Aimé had come very quickly when they’d tumbled afterward into bed, he’d spent some forty minutes kneeling between Jean-Pierre’s thighs before they had returned to the vanity table so that Jean-Pierre could start applying his make-up.</p><p>He had created dark shadows underneath Aimé’s eyes, making them appear hollowed and dry, and he had overlaid a pale, grey gauntness over Aimé’s face, a few bloody cracks showing around his mouth.</p><p>“You have fake blood?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Do you want any?” Jean-Pierre asked, picking up his powder and tray and tapping his brush against it. “I thought to depict you as a corpse reanimated, as though the axe had come down upon your neck but been stopped by your spine.” He reached up, cupping the side of Aimé’s throat and pressing his thumb down on the spot where he felt the wound would stop. “I would give your throat the appearance of being split on this side, and messy with greying gore, like so much cooling meat. If you want for something fresher, I would need to use a different palette.”</p><p>Aimé was staring at him, his blue lips parted, and then he said, “Uh… No, Jean, you, uh. You do that. That sounds good.”</p><p>“I am glad it pleases you,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and turned his attention to Aimé’s jaw, painting a bruise on the underside of his chin, as though he had been shoved very hard against the executioner’s block.</p><p>“It feels nice,” Aimé said quietly. “The brushes. Your hands.”</p><p>“It does, doesn’t it?” Jean-Pierre asked. “Asmodeus taught me.”</p><p>“… Seriously?”</p><p>“He does his own stage make-up,” Jean-Pierre murmured, setting the brush aside and picking up some sculpting clay, beginning to warm it between his hands. It felt plasticky between his palms, and he opened his hands so that Aimé could touch his fingers to it, interested.</p><p>Aimé’s phone began to buzz again in the corner of the room – it had been ringing all weekend.</p><p>“Your mother again?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “Probably.”</p><p>“I looked her up,” Jean-Pierre said, because it was true, although he knew very well that he was making it sound like he’d only looked her up very recently. “Margaret Bebhin. Not an incredibly French name, but she is the daughter of the grandmother you lived with in Montauban, no?”</p><p>“My grandparents got divorced in the seventies,” Aimé murmured. “After they divorced, my granda just didn’t have anything worth keeping him in France, I guess, so he came back here. My mother grew up in Montauban, but when she was… I don’t know, a teenager, like fifteen, sixteen? She insisted on coming to Dublin. She wanted to go to some boarding school in Paris, and my granda was happy to pay for it, but my grandmother kept saying no.”</p><p>“Is it so surprising a young woman would want to go north from Montauban?” Jean-Pierre asked as he worked. “Il n’y a pas de vie au-delà du périph,” he added, and Aimé gave him a sour look.</p><p>“Shut the fuck up,” he said. “The périphérique wasn’t even there until two centuries after your pretty face hit the ground. Pure <em>notions</em>.”</p><p>“Notions, is it?” Jean-Pierre repeated, raising his eyebrows, and he tilted Aimé’s head back slightly to get a better view of his neck to model his clay on. “We do not have notions in France.”</p><p>“Not in la province,” Aimé said. “But in Paris, notions abound.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed.</p><p>“So your mother came to Ireland,” Jean-Pierre murmured, beginning to paint the prosthetic now he’d moulded it into place – he’d shaved Aimé’s neck to make the process easier – so that he could pack more clay over top and make the gore look more three-dimensional once he was done. “And became a corporate lawyer.”</p><p>“That’s how she met my dad,” Aimé murmured, although his nose was wrinkling as he said it – the modelling clay no doubt felt strange upon his skin. “She stopped working to have me, and then never went back to work. Don’t know why she bothered – I barely ever saw her when I was a kid, just got bounced between childminders, and then I went to boarding school.”</p><p>It was amusing, in its way. Aimé sounded bitter about many things, but he didn’t sound particularly bitter about this – he said it very casually, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, the motion a small one in order that he not jar Jean-Pierre’s hands as he worked with the brush.</p><p>The phone, which had ceased to vibrate, began to buzz again.</p><p>“Evidently,” Jean-Pierre murmured, “she wants to see you now.”</p><p>“No,” Aimé murmured. “She wants to cry down the phone ‘til I feel guilty enough to do what my dad says.”</p><p>“And what is it that Monsieur Deverell decrees?” Jean-Pierre asked. “Your grades are very good, you are drinking less, we have been boxing a few times – you are healthier…”</p><p>“He doesn’t care about any of that,” Aimé murmured. “He wanted me to have a careerist’s degree – he couldn’t give a shit about what grades I get in Philosophy. He wants me to marry some girl and get her pregnant so he can start investing his time in a grandchild instead of his fuck-up son.”</p><p>“He said this to you?”</p><p>“Not in so many words,” Aimé muttered, his eyes closed. He was completely relaxed under Jean-Pierre’s attentions, his throat bared, and Jean-Pierre couldn’t resist the urge to delicately trace over the column of his throat, watching Aimé’s Adam’s apple bob under his touch. “From an economical perspective, we have something called sunk cost. It’s the idea of money that you’ve invested, for good or for bad, that you can’t now recoup. Some people, after they make a bad investment, keep putting money into it – in their heads, they justify it as, you know, they’ve already put a lot of money into it, so they <em>have</em> to put more money into it to make it succeed again. That’s the sunk cost fallacy – throwing good money after bad.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre reached for another piece of modelling clay, and as Aimé experimentally leaned forward, moving his neck slowly from side to side to make sure he wasn’t dislodging the half-finished wound on the side of his neck, he met Jean’s gaze.</p><p>“My dad’s sensible with his money,” Aimé said. “He sees that I’ve been a bad investment, but I’m the only route to a better opportunity, unless he ditches my mother and fucks someone new, and he doesn’t want to do that. Magical inheritance law in Ireland is based way too much in fae custom – it’s weighted toward the eldest child, so if he had another kid, he’d have to kill me, and the optics would be bad for business.</p><p>“So, logical conclusion, wait for me to have a grandkid, wait for me to kill myself or have me declared unfit or, probably, because I’m not interested in being anyone’s dad, just take the grandkid in himself when I inevitably get divorced or go on a bender. Luc gets a new heir, Maggie keeps her husband, and I’m allowed to drink myself to death. Everybody’s happy.”</p><p>It was said so simply, so shrewdly, that Jean-Pierre had to take a moment to really digest it, to take it in.</p><p>Deverell had been asking around about Jean-Pierre, in recent weeks – Jean-Pierre knew this, because when people asked questions about him, the ripples tended to reach him. One had to keep an eye on things like this.</p><p>He was frustrated, Jean-Pierre expected – there was no doubt an awareness, much as Deverell wished there were not, that Jean-Pierre was not a flighty young thing that might be paid off to leave Deverell’s only son be, and he was in a somewhat unique position, in that the man could not threaten him whatsoever.</p><p>He would not kill Monsieur Deverell, of course – it would be rude.</p><p>That kill was Aimé’s, if he wanted it.</p><p>“You’re smiling,” Aimé said, looking amused. “I tell you my dad wants me dead like he’s tossing away bad stock, and you’re smiling.”</p><p>“I am not smiling at your misfortune,” Jean-Pierre said. “Merely— Well, when I met you, Aimé, I thought you would be rather stupid, and lacking in self-awareness. You continue to surprise me.”</p><p>Aimé started to laugh, clutching at his belly as he leaned back in his chair. He had been laughing like that a lot, recently – it was a wonderful laugh, hoarse and throaty and coming from very deep within him – and every time he heard it, Jean-Pierre thought he would burst. In this instance, however, he had to rush to pick up a tissue and tear it two, putting it to the corners of Aimé’s eyes before he could smudge his maquillage.</p><p>“Ange,” Aimé said softly when he’d finally stopped, although he was breathing a little heavily, and from the way he was absently stroking his stomach, Jean-Pierre guessed his diaphragm was somewhat sore.</p><p>“Yes, mon cœur?”</p><p>“You…” Aimé opened his mouth, and then he closed it again, giving a small shake of his head. “People like me don’t deserve people like you.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre pressed his lips together, looking at Aimé with affection. “I call you stupid, and you tell me you love me?”</p><p>“That isn’t what I said,” Aimé said. “That isn’t what you said either, actually.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre kissed him, though Aimé’s lips tasted of powder, and felt Aimé smile against his mouth.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>No one at the party that Aimé had seen, so far, was taller than Jean-Pierre, which was <em>sort</em> of a relief, but also a bit of a disappointment.</p><p>By the time they’d arrived, a little after nine-thirty, the party had already been in full swing, and Aimé was fascinated – they’d had to drive about an hour outside of the city to get here, and Colm had absently said it was a relatively new restaurant that they’d booked out for the purpose, but it looked like no restaurant Aimé had ever seen.</p><p>The four storeys of the building were tiered in the way that Aimé had seen some holiday villas tiered before, forming a kind of gigantic staircase with tables and chairs on each of the floors, except for the one at the top, which was exclusively a dance floor, although people were dancing everywhere.</p><p>He had felt the ward circle as they’d stepped over the threshold into the restaurant proper, not just because of the shift in magical fields, but because of the sheer difference in temperature – it had been twelve degrees with a cold wind when they’d stepped out of the car, but despite this party being in the open air, it was warm, dry, and balmy, and not the sort of night he’d hope for even in August.</p><p>Long tables had been laid out with all kinds of food on small platters, and Aimé felt almost like a mundie as he looked around – Jean-Pierre had let his wings out as soon as he’d gotten out of the car, and he’d shown Aimé how he made the slats in his blouse and matador’s jacket, how he insulted the gap so that they didn’t rub the base of his wing as he moved, but Aimé could see that he wasn’t the only one. There were other winged angels, and there were fae, too, with different kinds of wings, wings that looked like they were made of stained glass, like a dragonfly’s, or wings like a butterfly’s, and of the winged people he saw, not all of them had wings sprouting from behind their shoulders – some of them had wings on their feet or sprouting from their heads.</p><p>He’d never been that much around the magical community, not really – not like this, where everyone mingled and drank and laughed. He’d only ever been to refined, delicate parties, where all the real drunkenness was behind closed doors – fundraisers, shit like that, and most of those had been before he was old enough to be considered an embarrassment.</p><p>This, this was…</p><p>Revelry.</p><p>As soon as they came into the central crowd, Jean-Pierre saw a woman he apparently knew, who was dressed as Jeanne d’Arc, because they both let out loud shouts and then grabbed hold of each other, kissing each other’s cheeks, before walking off in the direction of the table laden down with fruits.</p><p>“He’ll do that a lot,” Colm said. “But he probably won’t fuck anyone else without asking you to watch.”</p><p>Aimé opened his mouth. Closed it. “Are you being serious?”</p><p>“Pretty serious,” Colm said.</p><p>Aimé tried very, very hard not to think about it. Colm was studying his face, apparently because he knew exactly how hard Aimé was trying <em>not</em> to, and when Aimé finally broke, let himself think about one of the men here fucking Jean in front of him – perhaps the guy next to him dressed as a viking who was stacked and covered in tattoos, or two vampires in sexy nurse’s uniforms laughing into the same wine glass – a burst of heat ran through him, and he shifted slightly on his feet.</p><p>“You two are disgusting,” Colm said.</p><p>“What did you want me to say, Colm?” Aimé asked, tilting his head to one side and looking at the other man. He put on a faux-dramatic voice, clutching at his heart, “Oh, no, how could Jean sleep with someone else, what about his chastity pledge?”</p><p>“You’re not meant to find it <em>hot</em>.”</p><p>“You don’t fuck anybody, you don’t get to decide what’s hot,” Aimé said, and Colm scoffed, tangling a hand in Aimé’s hair and ruffling it hard, making Aimé laugh and shove him hard in the side.</p><p>“We should box sometime this week,” Colm said as they moved through the crowd, toward the bar. “You’re off, right?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’d be up for it,” Aimé said. “Do you prefer to fight bare knuckle?”</p><p>“I do,” Colm said, “but I can pick up gloves if you want. You and Jean fight with gloves?”</p><p>“We’re kind of half and half at the moment,” Aimé said, tugging down the ruffle of the blouse Jean-Pierre had given him – the clothes were surprisingly comfortable, although they were old, and Colm had even mocked up a fake axe head that stuck out of the – frankly, frighteningly realistic – wound Jean-Pierre had painted on the side of his neck.</p><p>Colm had put on a fake halo and a pair of cheap, children’s angel wings that looked ridiculously small on his broad shoulders, and called it a day – according to Jean-Pierre, this was the costume he wore every Halloween.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aimé said. “I know it’s actually <em>more</em> dangerous with the gloves on, but it feels like I could do more damage without them.”</p><p>“To yourself, maybe,” Colm said. “We can try it both ways – I’m okay with gloves, but they’re two different sports, you know yourself. You want to drink wine the Greek way or the French way?”</p><p>They were standing a little ways away from the bar, and Aimé stopped stock still, looking around to grasp what Colm meant. “What?”</p><p>“Well, I can go up to the bar and order you a glass of red, but you’ll have to look at the wine list to see what you want,” Colm said, “or you can wait here while I get my pint, and we can go upstairs and you can drink from a kylix, you know, the big shallow bowl you have to tilt carefully to drink from? That’s different wine, it’s the fortified stuff done the traditional way, but it’s watered down, and I’ll taste it first to make sure it doesn’t kill you.”</p><p>“You know when you put it like that, it’s not comforting.”</p><p>“I’m not comforting,” Colm said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m being honest.”</p><p>“I’ll try it the Greek way,” Aimé said after a second’s thought, and Colm laughed at him, shoving him in the head again.</p><p>He almost wished he’d brought his paint and canvases with him – he knew it’d be weird, to come to a party and paint everybody, but there were so many different <em>people</em> here, so many bright colours in their outfits, the colour of everybody’s skin, their hair, their jewellery, so many different <em>shapes</em> in people’s bodies and clothes, so many little things being acted out – people pouring wine, playing games, dancing.</p><p>He liked to paint things that were in motion, people in motion – he hadn’t even really drunk anything yet, because Colm had advised the drinks would be “strong and free, like a Republic,” and then laughed at his own joke, but he was in a good mood.</p><p>Maybe that had something to do with the fact that, not quite accidentally, he’d dropped his phone in the dish water when his mother called for the twenty-ninth time while he was washing last night’s casserole dish, and decided he’d get a new one.</p><p>Colm had slapped him upside the head for this, and put the phone in rice to dry out.</p><p>“Just throw out the SIM, you rich cunt,” he’d said. “If you want a new phone, we’ll give this one to someone who needs it.”</p><p>He’d tossed the SIM on the fire.</p><p>“You could probably make a lot of money painting at a party like this, you know,” Colm said as he came back from the bar with a tankard in his hand, and the two of them began to walk toward the stairs. It was crowded, but because it was such a big venue, there wasn’t the usual crush of people Aimé expected at a party. “All these people’d fucking love some guy to paint them – remind them of the old times.”</p><p>“You don’t think I’m rich enough?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“That’s your daddy’s money,” Colm said. “More of your own couldn’t hurt you.”</p><p>It was difficult to read Colm’s face, with him saying that. His expression was stout, his lips pressed together, and he was looking forward as he moved up the stairs instead of looking at Aimé.</p><p>“What are you gonna say next?” Aimé asked, so quietly that someone else wouldn’t be able to hear him over the music, but that didn’t really matter with Colm. “That I should come stay with you? That I should pack up all my stuff in my apartment, get out while I still can?”</p><p>“You realise I felt what you were feeling, talking with Jean the last night,” Colm said, his lip curling slightly. “You can’t just brush it off like you were being dramatic. You’re pretty certain your da would kill you – what, you think I shouldn’t give a shit?”</p><p>“Jean doesn’t.”</p><p>“Yes, he does,” Colm muttered. “He isn’t <em>worried</em> about it because he knows how hard it’d be for your da to get at you when you’re between the three of us, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.”</p><p>“My dad doesn’t want to kill me, I’m pretty sure, if it helps,” Aimé said. “He just wouldn’t care that much if I died – so long as I did certain things first.”</p><p>“How the fuck does that not <em>bother</em> you?”</p><p>“It bothers me.”</p><p>“Uh uh,” Colm said. “I know what it feels like when something freaks you out, and I know what it feels like when you’re repressing something, too – you’re not repressing shit. You say, straight-up, hey, my dad wants me dead, and it’s like it doesn’t even matter to you.”</p><p>Aimé shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t something that bothered him – it wasn’t something that had ever bothered him. He’d used to think it might be okay, if he just ticked the right boxes, so he could go back to Montauban, eventually, and now… It was different, now. “Colm, for a pretty long time, I wanted me dead too.”</p><p>Colm sucked his teeth, made a sharp sound. “The kylices are over here,” he said. “I’ll show you how.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“Jean-Pierre,” Doros said when he saw him, and Jean-Pierre lifted his head up as he embraced his brother, letting Doros cup his jaw in his hands to kiss him on each cheek, his hands a pleasant warmth where they slid to hold his neck, and at the same time, Jean-Pierre rested one of his palms against Doros’ own throat, the other reaching out to tug a feather bent awry out of his primaries. “Ouch,” Doros murmured against his lips, and Jean-Pierre giggled, inhaling and taking in the familiar scent of Doros – the frankincense scent of his wing oil and the dry dirt fragrance of his feathers, mingled in with the natural addition of olive oil.</p><p>“Hello, brother,” Jean-Pierre said softly, and when they hugged, Jean-Pierre brought his wings in, let Doros’ own wings – darker than his own, a heavier, heartier gold – engulf him in their soft heat.</p><p>“I am glad you joined us,” Doros said. “I am told you have brought your new lover.”</p><p>“He is a painter,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“He is ugly,” Doros said, drawing back and tracing his fingers over the side of Jean-Pierre’s jaw. “Aetos says he looks as though his sculptor lost grip on his clay.”</p><p>“Aetos should know better than most that a handsome appearance is nothing to an ugly soul,” Jean-Pierre said. “Or he would, if he only had one.”</p><p>Doros laughed, tugging on Jean-Pierre’s ear lobe, but it wasn’t hard enough to be a real scold, and Jean-Pierre wrapped one arm around his brother’s waist, pulling him close again, that they were cheek to cheek. They swayed idly to the music, and after a moment, Doros said, “I did invite Padraic Mac Giolla Chríost, you know, and sent a separate invitation for his daughter. He always ignores me, but I don’t see why she should, too.”</p><p>“Colm says Padraic has never cared for mummery,” Jean-Pierre said, resting his chin on Doros’ shoulder: Doros’ thick curls tickled the back of his neck, where his own hair was drawn into a bun, but he didn’t mind it. “And Bedelia, I couldn’t say – she seems to me to have a great many friends, but I don’t know any of them. Mundies, I expect.”</p><p>“Hmph,” Doros said disapprovingly, but said nothing else about it. His fingers were tracing small, pleasant lines up the lower half of Jean-Pierre’s spine, and it was very nice. “Will you join us for the orgy?”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Jean-Pierre said. “I don’t know what Aimé will want.”</p><p>Doros laughed: it was an airy sound, softly superior, and Jean-Pierre basked under it. “He’s hardly any better than a mundie. Does it <em>matter</em>?”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Jean-Pierre said. “I should like him to watch.”</p><p>“As though he could look away.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre chuckled, and he danced for a longer while with his brother, played his fingers through Doros’ feathers and felt him shiver. It was nice, from time to time, to spend time with angels he didn’t know so well – Doros was typically apart from many other angels, so bound up as he was with the Hellenists, but they were still brothers, after all.</p><p>“Join us for the orgy,” Doros murmured in Jean-Pierre’s ear, his teeth dragging over the shell of them: it was Jean-Pierre’s turn to shiver now, and he squeezed Doros’ hips.</p><p>“I will consider it,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and brushed their lips together before he stepped away, and went in search of Aimé.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>They’d been at the party for a few hours now, but without his phone and without any clocks, it was difficult to tell precisely how long, and honestly, precision wasn’t exactly high on his list of interest right now.</p><p>Colm had been introducing him to people left right and centre – when Colm had taught him how to drink from the kylix, a wide, shallow bowl that you had to tip very carefully to keep from spilling any wine, people had started making conversation with Colm, in Greek and in Irish, and when Colm had insisted on English for Aimé’s benefit, they’d talked to him too.</p><p>There were a lot of people at this party – almost all of the other humans apart from Aimé were Hellenists, and even dressed in Halloween costumes, a lot of them had visible tattoos and pendants and rings that showed the gods they worshiped.</p><p>A lot of them had Hermes’ winged shoes tattooed on them, or his name, or some other symbol of Hermes – he supposed it made sense, really.</p><p>They hadn’t been talking about anything in particular – a nymph with leaves growing out of her hair had told him all the grapes that had gone into the wine, and she’d opened Mr Zagre’s – the vintner, and one of the originals, at that – website on her tablet and showed him which of his wines they were drinking.</p><p>She’d also tried to reach into breeches, but he’d managed to stop her, and before she’d gotten too offended, Colm had whisked him off.</p><p>Aimé was pleasantly drunk, and he felt as though the room were rocking beneath his feet as he moved, but his actual body felt almost entirely steady: he walked easily, enjoyed the shift and swell of the ground beneath him, as he and Colm ducked into a little vanity room – it wasn’t actually a bathroom, but a small room between bathrooms, with a couch and a set of mirrors so that people could top up their make-up, Aimé supposed.</p><p>Or, you know.</p><p>For this.</p><p>He watched as Colm cut the powder more finely using the razorblade he apparently carried around in his pocket – Colm had had a good deal more to drink that Aimé had, even taking into account that Aimé had been drinking fortified wine, but his hand still moved preternaturally fast as he chopped.</p><p>“You do this often?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Not so often,” Colm said: he wasn’t any slower to move, but it seemed to Aimé his accent was thicker, or maybe it was just that Aimé was drunk. Either way, Aimé could hear the thick Kerryman’s brogue more than he ever had before, the musical lilt heavy in Colm’s voice. “From time to time. You go first.”</p><p>The first inhale was a sudden, sharp lightning strike to the brain: Aimé had been feeling slow and contented, but now he felt <em>buzzed</em>, and although it was numbed by the drink, there was an electric thrill running through his veins as he patted his own cheeks, falling back on one of the couches.</p><p>Colm laughed at him, taking a bump himself.</p><p>“I know how to make this, you know,” Colm said. “Heroin, too.”</p><p>“You telling me you have another secret grow house full of coca plants and poppies?” Aimé asked, not entirely disbelieving it, and Colm grinned at him.</p><p>“No,” he said. “But I could. Another?”</p><p>“Fuck yeah,” Aimé said.</p><p>He didn’t know when Jean-Pierre walked in, only that Jean-Pierre had, and when Aimé turned and noticed him, he jumped about three feet into the air, and so did Colm, the both of them bouncing back onto the couches.</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said hurriedly, feeling like he’d been caught out by the headteacher – except that this time around, he actually cared about being caught, and he stood hurriedly to his feet to face him. “Fuck, uh, we were just…”</p><p>Jean-Pierre grabbed him by his blood-stained cravat and pulled him closer, and Aimé went obediently with it as Jean-Pierre touched his cheeks, taking up one of his wrists and pressing his thumb against the point of Aimé’s pulse. It felt good, Jean-Pierre’s hands sliding over his skin, and Aimé wasn’t exactly proud of himself, but it was surprisingly hot when Jean-Pierre forced his jaws open and, lacking a tongue depressor, pressed two of his fingers onto Aimé’s tongue. What he <em>did</em> turn out to just carry around in his pocket was a little pocket torch, and he took Aimé by the chin and shone the light in and out of his eyes, testing the dilation of his pupils.</p><p>“Does it seriously turn you on when my brother gives you a fucking medical exam?”</p><p>“You should see how I react when he checks my prostate,” Aimé said, and Colm let out a disgusted sound.</p><p>“I can see your erection from here,” he said.</p><p>“Well, don’t look at it, then,” Aimé replied, and Jean-Pierre giggled, stroking his fingers down Aimé’s chest, and then pulled Aimé up to kiss him. Aimé wasn’t exactly going to complain – he’d expected a lecture, expected Jean-Pierre to tell him off for getting high, but a kiss wasn’t so bad at all.</p><p>Jean-Pierre pulled back from him, fluttering his eyelashes a moment as he leaned in closer, sliding his hand over Aimé’s arse and squeezing.</p><p>“May I try?” he asked softly, almost shyly.</p><p>Aimé stared up at him, surprised. “You want to try?” he repeated. Jean-Pierre gave a little nod of his head. “How much do we give you? Colm?”</p><p>“I know what he can take,” Colm said, and took his razor blade in hand: the dose for Jean-Pierre looked to Aimé to be a little less than half of what he and Colm had snorted apiece, and Aimé didn’t doubt, with how quick Colm was around a razorblade, with how easily he worked it out, that he could tell by eye what he was looking at within an eighth of a gram. “You never tried it before.”</p><p>“You think I won’t like it?” Jean-Pierre asked, looking at his brother askance, and Colm laughed.</p><p>“No, I think you’ll like it,” he said, and held the mirror of the compact out for Aimé to take. He held the mirror up for Jean, and Colm slapped him upside the head. “Christ’s sake, Aimé, he can’t fucking snort it, you’ve seen how easy he bruises – you want to see your boyfriend with a nosebleed? Into his <em>gums</em>.”</p><p>In a surprisingly good Kerry accent, a startling diversion from his usual one, Jean-Pierre looked Aimé in the face, and said, “Yeah, Aimé. Don’t you know shite?”</p><p>Aimé sniggered, ran his finger through the powder on the mirror.</p><p>“You know,” Jean-Pierre said pleasantly, “cocaine taken orally can cause mouth sores because of its acidity.”</p><p>Aimé stared at him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre opened his mouth wider, invitingly pulling up one of his lips.</p><p>“You are such a freak,” Aimé said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s cheeks turned pink, and he leaned into Aimé’s fingers.</p><p>As he gently dragged his finger up underneath Jean-Pierre’s lip, he could see the growing flush in Jean-Pierre’s face, could see the way his eyes dilated – not like Aimé’s, lopsided, but even and beautiful and perfect on both sides, and when Jean-Pierre sucked on Aimé’s fingers, sliding a finger to hook against the waistband of Aimé’s breeches, Aimé let out a low grunt.</p><p>“I’m going to fucking kill myself,” said Colm.</p><p>“It’s a free country, I won’t stop you,” Aimé replied, and swept his finger through more of the coke.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was a handful at the best of times: Jean-Pierre coked up was more than, and he barely seemed to hear Colm as he started rapidly undoing the fastenings of Aimé’s trousers, shoving him back onto the couch.</p><p>“Fuck,” Aimé hissed against Jean-Pierre’s neck as Jean-Pierre unfastened his own breeches.</p><p>“Okay, I’m going now,” said Colm. “Thanks for the coke, Colm, it was so good of you to cut it for me, Colm, why don’t you—”</p><p>“Are you going to stay for the orgy?” Jean-Pierre asked as he wrapped his hand around Aimé’s cock, making it impossible to concentrate enough on questioning the word “orgy” to actually voice the thought outside.</p><p>“No, but I can eat a late dinner while you whore yourself out like usual,” Colm said. “Will Aimé be joining me, or—?”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre murmured, meeting Aimé’s gaze at the same time as he twisted his wrist, and Aimé let out a shuddered, sharp noise as he ruched up Jean-Pierre’s stupid matador’s shirt, sliding his hands over his belly. “Aimé’s going to come with me. Aren’t you, Aimé?”</p><p>“Before you, I hope,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre laughed, kissing him bruisingly, wonderfully hard.</p><p>Colm’s sound of disgust was a very distant distraction.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>There was something funny about it.</p><p>It wasn’t that everyone else was naked – plenty of people, like Aimé, still had their costumes on, albeit in varying states of completion, and some of them, just like Aimé, were reclining on sofas or lying back, watching the action, so to speak, although most of them were paired off.</p><p>No one was sitting like Aimé, solitary and slouched back with one arm loosely over the back of his chair, sipping wine and watching their boyfriend get double-teamed by one of his brothers and an actual Greek god.</p><p>Pinned between Aetos, who was a strangely plain, average-looking guy with combed-back dirty blond hair and stubble on his cheeks, and Doros, another winged angel with dark curls, pink lips, and heavily lidded eyes, Jean-Pierre was arching his back, moaning from low in his throat. Doros obviously knew how to touch his wings, because with Jean almost in his lap, he was doing things to Jean-Pierre’s back that made Jean-Pierre writhe, and in front of him, Aetos was sucking livid marks against his neck, his shoulders, his chest.</p><p>When a hand slid over Aimé’s shoulder, down his back, he initially thought it was a waiter, and when he turned his head and was met with the tits of the nymph from earlier, he felt his eyebrows raise in surprise.</p><p>“You don’t seem busy,” she said sultrily.</p><p>“I—”</p><p>“Don’t fucking touch him,” Jean-Pierre said sharply, all thoughts of pleasure apparently abandoned for a moment, and when Aetos tried to shut up with a kiss, Jean-Pierre shoved him back by the throat, his grip tight enough that he actually made him choke. “Hands <em>off</em>.”</p><p>The nymph retracted her hand.</p><p>“Sorry, sweetheart,” Aimé said. “I need to be actively spectating here.”</p><p>The nymph did not look at Aimé when she said, shifting on her feet, “I could use my mouth.” She was looking at Jean-Pierre – she was asking <em>permission</em>, and Aimé exhaled, surprised by the new heat it sent thrilling through him.</p><p>“Go <em>away</em>,” said Jean-Pierre petulantly, like a spoilt brat – it had never occurred to Aimé that he could be so bratty while impaled on two cocks at once, but if anyone could, he supposed it was Jean-Pierre.</p><p>The nymph muttered under her breath as she walked away.</p><p>“Bring your chair closer,” Jean-Pierre ordered, and Aimé got to his feet, putting his wine glass down. Doros looked amused, but Aetos looked somewhere between baffled and fascinated by this – admittedly strange – exchange, and the two of them watched Aimé with interest as he came closer, until Aimé reached out and slid his fingers under Jean’s, pulling his hand from around Aetos’ throat.</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s furious moue faded. “It’s not Mr Talaria’s fault that girl came up to me again, is it?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s sour expression came right back, and he looked abruptly, dangerously furious, so that Aimé shivered.</p><p>“<em>Again</em>?” he repeated.</p><p>“I’m gonna bring my chair closer,” Aimé said, and flipped his chair around this time, leaning on the back of it: this tacit assurance that no one would be sliding into his lap while Jean-Pierre was otherwise occupied – which was insane, because one nymph with low standards and a shared interest in wine did not a threat make – seemed to be enough for Jean-Pierre, though, because he relaxed once again between Aetos and Doros both.</p><p>“He knows how to handle you, doesn’t he?” Doros murmured in Jean-Pierre’s ear, and then pressed down on Jean’s belly as they started to move their hips again, and Aetos dragged Jean-Pierre into a kiss before he could pull away.</p><p>Aimé really, <em>really</em> wished he could paint this – fuck painting it, he wished he could video it and play it on loop on Colm’s movie projector.</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre moaned, hissing the sibilant “s”, and when he spread out his wings, a few feathers dropped to the floor.</p><p>Aimé grinned as he watched the angel come.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Gently Held</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please fill out <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1R5L5s4dYG5KTg4MSXKiTXbG2e9pYboAEVrxSMQZyRw0/edit?chromeless=1">this survey</a> about Powder and Feathers!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
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  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>The party had run down, now, and even the energy at the orgy had mostly been exhausted – a lot of people had gone home, and although music was still playing more softly on one of the other floors, a handful of people dancing and scattered around, the five of them were gathered around a table without anyone else. Occasionally, in between packing away the tables and the food left out on them, a waiter would come by and asking if they needed more wine or more chips, but that was all.</p><p>“Why don’t you try a tiropita, Aimé?” Aetos suggested mildly, holding out a plate piled high with little folded pasties, and although he had no idea what was in them, Aimé obediently took one of them, holding it over his own plate to look at it.</p><p>“Is it like the spanakopita?”</p><p>“It’s a cheese pie,” supplied Colm, and Aimé nodded his head before he took a bite, letting out a low groan at the way the warm pastry flaked under his mouth, at the rich taste of the two cheeses inside.</p><p>“He eats well,” Doros said approvingly, though he said it to Colm as though Aimé wasn’t there.</p><p>He couldn’t tell if Aetos lacked a personality or if it was just that the weed he’d been smoking with Colm had chilled him out, but Doros was a lot like Jean-Pierre: haughty, superior, and very aware of how pretty he was. Doros and Aetos only actually addressed him about half the time, and most of the time they talked about him to Colm or Jean-Pierre in the same way one would comment on a friend’s pet dog. It wasn’t quite blatant enough to be a turn-on, but he was more alright with it than he probably should have been.</p><p>If he had a therapist, it was maybe something he’d have to try to unpack, but he’d always tried to avoid self-reflection if at all possible, and that was before an angel decided he was their new favourite plaything.</p><p>“Have to make sure I’m a good cushion for certain invested parties,” Aimé said with a downward gesture, and Aetos and Doros both laughed.</p><p>They were all around a low table close to the ground, one that reminded Aimé of the ones he’d seen in historically accurate depictions of the Last Supper: Aetos was lying on his side, reclining against a few stacked cushions, as was Colm, and Doros was sitting cross-legged, his wings a golden cowl around his shoulders.</p><p>Aimé, on the other hand, was sitting up mostly straight perpendicular to the table, a few cushions against his lower back, and his legs were spread out in front in front of him. They had to be, because he had l’ange in between them, spread out on his belly with his face mashed against Aimé’s belly and his cheek on Aimé’s thigh, his arms wrapped around Aimé’s waist and his wings blanketing Aimé’s legs.</p><p>It did not at all look like a comfortable position, but he’d even tried gently smacking Jean’s face a few times, and he hadn’t stirred at all – whether it was from getting double-teamed by Aetos and Doros, the cocaine, or just staying up until three o’clock when he normally had a much earlier bedtime for himself, Jean-Pierre was <em>bushed</em>, and he was snoring softly in his sleep.</p><p>“He’s going to be such a fucking bitch when he wakes up,” Aimé murmured, stroking gently through Jean-Pierre’s feathers.</p><p>“Because he missed a meal?” Aetos asked, arching an eyebrow. “He barely ever eats anything anyway.”</p><p>“Because he’s never had coke before and he’s going to be hungover as shit,” Colm supplied, and Aimé sighed as he nodded his head in agreement.</p><p>“His temper did seem even shorter than usual,” Doros said wryly, and Aimé waggled his eyebrows as he curled a lock of Jean-Pierre’s hair around his fingers, feeling how smooth and soft it was against his skin. “But it seems you know how to contain my brother’s moods when he gets out of hand, hm?”</p><p>“I wish,” Aimé said, and stroked his fingers down the back of Jean-Pierre’s neck, feeling the way he sighed in his sleep and relaxed even more against Aimé’s legs. “You’re older than him, right?”</p><p>“By a few thousand years,” said Doros. “But age isn’t everything, is it, my sweet?”</p><p>This was to Aetos, who sighed, and leaned further back onto his cushions. “Not at all, Doro, not at all.”</p><p>“How long have you known him now?” Doros asked, meeting Aimé’s gaze: his eyes were a reddish brown, like autumn leaves trod underfoot. “Jean-Pierre?”</p><p>“Only a few months,” Aimé said. “Since the summer.”</p><p>“Do you love him?” Doros asked, arching his eyebrows.</p><p>Aimé laughed. “Do you?”</p><p>“Sometimes,” Doros said, and Aimé watched the way he ate his pomegranate – Jean-Pierre was fastidious with a pomegranate, often ate the seeds one by one, but Doros scooped up a smattering of them with each shift of his hands, and sucked the juice from his fingers. “Sometimes, I don’t. I’m sure you know by now that Jean is as easy to love as a storm.”</p><p>“Storms I like,” Aimé said. “Storms are easier than Jean.”</p><p>Doros chuckled: it was a low, seductive sound, if you liked that sort of thing. “I’m sure you think so.”</p><p>“You ready to make shapes?” Colm asked, in between mouthfuls of moussaka.</p><p>“You sober enough to drive?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“It’s nearly four,” Colm said. “Even If my reflexes weren’t sharp, there wouldn’t be anyone to hit.”</p><p>More out of curiosity than a real fear of being in the passenger seat with Colm behind the wheel, let alone breaking the law, Aimé asked, “What happens if you get breathalysed?”</p><p>“I don’t,” Colm said simply. “If we meet the gardaí I’ll knock the officers out, make sure they don’t remember stopping us.”</p><p>Aimé stared at him. “Can you do that?”</p><p>“You’d rather we get arrested?” Colm asked. Aimé shrugged his shoulders, and Colm, turning to Doros, tapped his fingers on the table. “That reminds me. I have six kilos in the boot for you.”</p><p>“<em>Very</em> kind,” Doros murmured. “Will you trade them to me for leftovers?”</p><p>“Very happily,” was the reply, and Aimé laughed to himself at the insanity of it all, and concentrated on easing Jean-Pierre up and out of his lap. Even with his wings out, he was easily light enough to carry, and sleepily, Jean-Pierre mumbled vaguely about how <em>les gendarmes a percé les barricades </em>as he wrapped his arms around Aimé’s neck, and Aimé hushed him.</p><p>He spread Jean-Pierre out on the backseat as Colm tossed Aetos and Doros their cannabis, shoving a few pillows from the trunk underneath him and folding his limbs and his wings in so that they didn’t get caught in the door, and then he slid into the passenger seat alongside Colm, clicking his seatbelt into place.</p><p>“You know how to drive?” Colm asked.</p><p>“Sure,” Aimé said. “I have my license, I just don’t see the point in having a car.”</p><p>“Your license French or Irish?”</p><p>“Irish,” Aimé said. “I learned to drive when I was still doing my leaving. If I’d waited to learn in France, I’d have had to stick at it for a few years, the expectations for drivers are a lot higher there. What is their… deal?”</p><p>He nodded toward the back window as Colm pulled out of the now almost-empty car park, and Colm glanced in the mirror as he gave Aetos and Doros a final wave.</p><p>“Deal?” Colm repeated blankly. For all he’d said about not paying attention on the road, he was a meticulous driver, and Aimé was fairly certain he was sober – even talking with Aimé, he didn’t take his eyes off the road for a second as they rolled up the drive to join back onto the main road – which wasn’t a main road at all, and was a winding, country road that even when you were on it didn’t look as if it was leading anywhere.</p><p>“You said Aetos was Hermes.”</p><p>“He is,” Colm said.</p><p>“He didn’t seem very godly.”</p><p>“Well, it was a party,” Colm said. “Night off work.”</p><p>Aimé sniggered.</p><p>“It was explained to me once as different facets,” Colm said. “All of that kind of person has them – gods, certain spirits, anyone whose power is, to whatever extent, based off of or topped up by other people’s belief, their worship, you know. They can come off as regular people if they want to, blend in with everyone, or they can appear larger than life, make your eyes hurt to look at them. I don’t know, I’m not a theologist.”</p><p>“Doesn’t it feel blasphemous?”</p><p>“A god isn’t God,” Colm said. “God is singular, absolute, eternal. But those gods, they come and they go.”</p><p>“What the fuck does that mean?”</p><p>“Well,” Colm said, “None of those gods are all-seeing, all-knowing, et cetera – they have their creation myths, but they all overlap with one another, so none of them is actually <em>true</em>.”</p><p>“Unlike your religion,” Aimé said dryly. “Which is obviously true, not like all the rest.”</p><p>“Exactly,” Colm said.</p><p>“You’re so full of shit,” Aimé said. “You got any facts to back that up?”</p><p>“I don’t know fucking proofs of God,” Colm said. “You can talk about that shit with Jean, he’s the one with all the books. I know that God is God, prayer is prayer, and alms is alms. S’all I need to know.”</p><p>Aimé considered this for a moment, and then asked, snidely, “Is Doros a Catholic?”</p><p>“Doros has been Aetos’ consort for a few thousand years. What do you think?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aimé said, shrugging his shoulders and looking out the window. “You two are Catholic, Padraic and Bedelia are Catholics. I assume with a name like Benedictine, <em>she’s</em> a Catholic.”</p><p>“She is,” Colm said gruffly. “But not all angels are Catholic. Some of them are wrong.”</p><p>Aimé started laughing again, tipping his head back against the seat, and then he picked one of the bottles of water that he knew Colm kept in the car door, swallowing down a few mouthfuls before passing the bottle to Colm. They passed it between them until it was empty, and then Aimé rested it in his lap, tapping it against his knees.</p><p>There was a sort of dullness throbbing in his head, a sign of the hangover to come – he knew if he had another bump of coke he’d be energised, but he also knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and there was a natural point in any evening where a craving for more cocaine was a sign you should stop, not that you should take more, and his had been about four hours ago.</p><p>“Are angels always going to treat me like that?” Aimé asked. “Outside of your family, I mean.”</p><p>“All angels are family,” Colm said, but his lips curved up slightly into a smile.</p><p>“Close family, then,” Aimé said. “Outside of you three and the Mac Giolla Chríosts, and George. Just… regular angels, everyday ones.”</p><p>“Some will,” Colm said. “Some won’t. Jean-Pierre never dates other immortals – fucks them from time to time, has standing arrangements here and there, but never gotten romantically involved with one.”</p><p>“The balance would be too even,” Aimé said. “He wouldn’t be able to stand it.”</p><p>Colm laughed, smacking his hand against the steering wheel with such a loud slap that Aimé actually glanced at Jean-Pierre, but he was still completely out of it, his jaw slack in sleep, and Aimé supposed Colm would know when Jean-Pierre was stirring anyway.</p><p>“True enough, true enough,” Colm murmured. “It’s not just that, though. A lot of immortals, we get cold, callous. Jean-Pierre likes humans ‘cause they’re not usually like that. When death is a genuine threat, you respect life more – your life, other people’s lives. Not always, but generally. And when you see other people die, and you never do, it’s easy to feel superior, and act superior, too.</p><p>“People like Doros treat you like Jean-Pierre’s dog because in his mind, you might as well be one. Doros thinks you’re simpler than Jean is; you have less impact on the world; your life is going to be so short it won’t make a ripple in anyone’s pool but Jean’s.”</p><p>“Jean doesn’t think of me like that, though,” Aimé said. He was surprised by how certain he was of the fact, even though he couldn’t decide whether it comforted him or unnerved him. “I know he doesn’t think of me as an equal, but it’s… He treats me like a toy sometimes, but he wants me to take care of him.”</p><p>“Yeah, he’s pretty fucked in the head,” Colm said.</p><p>Aimé, smiling to himself, shifted back in his seat to look at Colm.</p><p>Colm took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at him, and then he sighed, squeezing the wheel. “He loves you,” he said. “That’s real, I can tell you that. But I like you, Aimé, and I think you should run for the fucking hills where Jean is concerned.”</p><p>“You don’t.”</p><p>“He’s my brother,” Colm said. “It’s not the same.”</p><p>Aimé looked at Jean-Pierre in the mirror, watched his wings flutter in his sleep. He was beautiful, of course – he was always beautiful, even slack-jawed and fast asleep, he was beautiful. Beauty was his natural state.</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm said quietly. “He’s perfect, when he’s unconscious.”</p><p>Aimé closed his eyes, and tipped his seat back.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“Hey, sweetheart,” Aimé said softly beside him, and Jean-Pierre groaned into his pillows, forcing one dry eye open. A great deal of time had passed, he thought, since the end of the Halloween party – he remembered vaguely being carried to and from Colm’s car, and he remembered Aimé waking him up a few times to force him to drink some pineapple juice.</p><p>This was the first time he had woken and not felt as though his throat were blistering in its parched dryness, and the first time he’d really been cognizant of the hunger gnawing in his belly.</p><p>The headache, thank God, was broadly faded, and there was no longer a tired ache permeating his every muscle.</p><p>“What time is it?” he asked.</p><p>“Three o’clock,” said Aimé. “On <em>Tuesday</em>.”</p><p>“Tuesday?” Jean-Pierre blearily repeated.</p><p>“Uh huh, hangover literally hit you into next week,” Aimé said, and he eased his hand into Jean-Pierre’s greasy hair and pulled him up from the bed by the grip he had, pushing a plate toward him. “Time to eat something, ange.”</p><p>He didn’t wait for Jean-Pierre to say anything: he brought a slice of apple up to Jean-Pierre’s mouth, and obediently, Jean-Pierre took it, chewing and tasting the sweetness on his tongue, the texture of it against his stale-tasting teeth.</p><p>“You smell of sweat,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“I was at the gym with Colm,” Aimé said as he picked up a piece of strawberry. “Sorry.”</p><p>“Not a complaint,” Jean-Pierre mumbled, rubbing tiredly at one eye. “You smell good. Sex?”</p><p>Aimé laughed: it was a pleasant sound, and when Jean-Pierre opened his tired eyes to look at him in the dim light of the room, Aimé was smiling indulgently. “More fruit first,” Aimé said quietly. “Then we can shower. We both need it.”</p><p>“Mmm,” Jean-Pierre agreed, and picked up the half of dragon fruit Aimé had laid out for him. He knew how to make a good platter, by now, with a variety of textures and smells, and as Jean-Pierre ate, he leaned his cheek against Aimé’s chest, felt Aimé’s fingers stroke through his wings, pulling out the feathers that were loose or bent from having been laid in bed for a few days.</p><p>“I don’t want to do cocaine again,” Jean-Pierre mumbled.</p><p>“I figured,” Aimé replied, stroking the back of his neck. “You don’t have to.”</p><p>He was very gentle with Jean-Pierre as he drew him toward the hot, steaming air of the already running shower, and Jean-Pierre all but collapsed against Aimé’s chest, letting the other man scrub him clean, letting Aimé’s hands run through his hair, and Aimé did it all for him, without complaint, without even making an amusing comment about it.</p><p>He enjoyed this, Jean-Pierre thought.</p><p>Taking care of someone, being wanted, being needed, he enjoyed that, but he enjoyed this, too: he enjoyed Jean-Pierre limp and pliant under his fingers, liked being able to touch Jean-Pierre however he pleased, with propriety, and yet for all that, his cock was hard indeed, watching Jean-Pierre touched by other men.</p><p>“I don’t like it when other people touch you,” Jean-Pierre murmured against Aimé’s mouth as they stood under the spray together, his fingers sliding over Aimé’s thighs, his hips, his waist. “You’re mine. They oughtn’t touch what’s mine.”</p><p>“And when people touch you?” Aimé asked, breathless, shaky, weak and eager under Jean-Pierre’s hands.</p><p>“You like it when people touch me,” Jean-Pierre murmured.</p><p>“Maybe I don’t,” Aimé said. It was less than convincing.  </p><p>Jean-Pierre looked into his face, raised his eyebrows, pouted at his lips: at the mere expression, Aimé shivered, his hips jerking under the stream of hot water. “You don’t want to see me fucked? You don’t want to see me overwhelmed as you can do naught but watch, powerless, aware that I am being satisfied by men beyond your means? Aware that your gaze is at times more appealing to me than your touch? Aware that you alone are not enough to satisfy me?”</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>, Jean,” Aimé hissed: his cock had been half-hard but was stiffening in Jean-Pierre’s hand, and Jean-Pierre chuckled, dragging his mouth over Aimé’s chest and delighting in the way he arched his back, falling clumsily against the shower wall.</p><p>“A willing cuckold who likes to be choked,” Jean-Pierre murmured, dragging his teeth over Aimé’s nipple and delighting in the sharp sound it drew from his throat. “What does that say about you, I wonder?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aimé said breathlessly. “What does it say about you that you want to be topped, but if I do it, you throw a tantrum?”</p><p>“I don’t,” Jean-Pierre said, offended, raising his head.</p><p>“Oh, don’t you?” Aimé replied, raising his eyebrows, even as he gasped and thrust his hips into Jean-Pierre’s hands. “Will the world end if you let me be in control?”</p><p>“I let you at the party,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“Because two other men were fucking you,” Aimé said. “Seems like the only time I could control you is if someone else exhausted you first.”</p><p>“You want to?” Jean-Pierre asked, surprised by how much it rankled, irritated him, that Aimé should say such a thing. “Control me?”</p><p>“It wouldn’t turn me off,” Aimé said. “But the main thing is that it seems like <em>you</em> want it. Then you rip me to pieces when I try.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre bit Aimé’s chest, and Aimé groaned.</p><p>“Is that a complaint?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“Uh-uh, nope, never, please, Jean, more—” He arched so wonderfully under Jean-Pierre’s hands, under his mouth, his touch – he liked it when Aimé gave himself over to Jean-Pierre like this, spread himself for more of Jean-Pierre’s touch, submitted so beautifully.</p><p>“Perhaps if it seemed like you truly desired command, I would let you command me,” Jean-Pierre said, and squeezed.</p><p>“Just want to make you happy, ange,” Aimé mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut, and Jean-Pierre felt himself soften.</p><p>“You do,” he murmured, and tugged Aimé’s hands down to his waist, that Aimé would lift him and have him against the wall.</p><p>Later, Jean-Pierre combed Aimé’s hair before he turned around so that Aimé could comb Jean-Pierre’s own, and groom through his wings so that they were not quite so unruly and untidy before he packed them away.</p><p>“You up for a date on Saturday?” Aimé asked. “I was thinking we could go to the art museum off the witches’ market. The IVA do a thing every year where they get immortals to pick through their storage and put some of the paintings they have gathering dust and display them.”</p><p>“You follow the events of the International Vampires’ Association very closely?”</p><p>“Last time I went, a guy put up a nude portrait of himself drawn by Da Vinci,” Aimé said. “Besides, it’s not all vampires, and we can go to the normal exhibits, too. I just like this one. It’s always, uh… Light-hearted. Fun. People don’t take it too seriously.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned back, laying his head in Aimé’s lap, and he looked up at Aimé’s face upside down. “You do not think people should take art seriously?” he asked. “A curious thing for an artist to say.”</p><p>“It’s pigment on paper,” Aimé said, shrugging his shoulders. “None of it’s all that important, materially.”</p><p>“Your art is important,” Jean-Pierre murmured.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“It is beautiful.”</p><p>“I guess. I try. But I’m not a big name – I’ll never be a big name, even if I sell my art, and the whole art business is just bullshit for moving money around without paying taxes, anyway. That’s why I like the IVA events – they’re all immortals showing the weirdest shit from their attics. No one’s trying to sell anything or make themselves seem important.”</p><p>“Vampires always think they’re important,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>Aimé flicked him on the nose, making him laugh. “And angels,” Aimé said sarcastically, “you never think you’re important.”</p><p>“Did it anger you?” Jean-Pierre asked, finding himself curious as he caught hold of one of Aimé’s hands, tracing his palm with an idle fingertip. “That Aetos and Doros had me between them at the orgy?”</p><p>“My erection at the time seemed angry to you?” Aimé asked dryly.</p><p>“You did not attempt to join us.”</p><p>Aimé inhaled, and Jean-Pierre watched the flare of his nostrils, watched his lips moved a moment, rehearsing, before he met Aimé’s gaze properly, and said, “If I’d joined in, I wouldn’t have had such a good view. And you like people to watch.”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said. “But you, first and foremost. I like <em>you</em> to watch.”</p><p>Aimé’s expression was difficult to describe as he twisted his lopsided lips together. “Why?” he asked.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Yeah. Why me?”</p><p>“You are my lover, Aimé.”</p><p>“Uh huh. But why do you want me watching? It turns you on if I’m getting cucked?”</p><p>“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “The humiliation is of your own invention, not mine. I knew you would hold me, afterward.”</p><p>“Fuck,” Aimé whispered. “<em>Fuck</em>, Jean.”</p><p>Jean shifted his head, resting it more solidly in the pillow of Aimé’s lap, and Aimé handed him the remote control before he could ask for it, letting Jean turn on the television.</p><p>“You are very good to me, Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said happily.</p><p>“Well,” Aimé said. “Gotta balance out the bad somehow.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre chuckled, and began to swipe through choices of what to watch.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please fill out <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1R5L5s4dYG5KTg4MSXKiTXbG2e9pYboAEVrxSMQZyRw0/edit?chromeless=1">this survey</a> about Powder and Feathers!</p>
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<a name="section0025"><h2>25. The Gallery</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Long chapter. Please remember to comment at the end!</p><p>CW for sexual assault in captivity.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Aimé had been avoiding his own flat the past while.</p><p>After Jean-Pierre had dozed, watching a historical show Aimé didn’t know and hadn’t paid attention to – it had been in Spanish, and he was pretty sure it hadn’t occurred to Jean-Pierre that Aimé couldn’t understand it without subtitles, but hadn’t been invested enough to ask him to turn them on – he had turned in Aimé’s lap, tapping on the cover of the book he had been reading.</p><p>“May I ask you a question, mon cœur?” he asked softly. When Aimé blinked down at him, nodding his head, he’d went on, “Are you avoiding your apartment, of late, because you do not wish for your father to visit you?”</p><p>Aimé had been surprised. It probably was the main reason he’d been sticking with the angels, but he really hadn’t thought that much about it – he’d been intentionally avoiding thinking about it, and with Jean-Pierre so clingy the past few weeks, it had been easy to just… not go home.</p><p>He missed painting, when he thought about it. He’d been sketching a little, but that was all. Jean-Pierre was sensitive to cigarette smoke, and as much as he complained about the paint smell from time to time, it wasn’t the same as painting <em>in</em> the house with him – there just wasn’t great ventilation or anywhere with good enough lighting and enough space to work in this house, except for under the canopy in the back garden.</p><p>He hadn’t gone back to pick up any paints, just yet.</p><p>He’d been putting it off. He hasn’t let himself think about why.</p><p>He’d been quiet for too long, because Jean-Pierre reached up, stroked one of his fingers up the length of Aimé’s wrist, sliding under his jumper.</p><p>“Your father has input the enchantment surrounding your flat,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “He commands it, and could always enter if he pleased. I could amend that for you, if you wish.”</p><p>“What, so you can control it instead?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled, and shook his head. “I can tell you what I do as I do it, you know,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “You have talent with enchantment – you are literate enough to follow my work.”</p><p>“No,” Aimé murmured, shaking his head. There was a kind of thick, uncomfortable catch in his chest, a familiar dragging anxiety, and he wanted to get up and walk downstairs, but Jean-Pierre was a weight in his lap, his cheek pressed against Aimé’s thigh. “I’ve seen the stuff you do. You enchant in twelve styles at once – and a lot of it is Asmodeus’ style, the Egyptian one.”</p><p>“You recognise that it is Egyptian, do you not?” Jean-Pierre asked, arching an eyebrow. “You are literate enough that you see where in my enchantment the traditional Welsh style intersects with the Irish, you see where I employ Gallic and Gothic styles. If we went downstairs now, and I pried back the skirting board, you could tell me the origin of every symbol I pointed to, no matter that you might not be able to replicate or even tell me its effect. You are educated in enchantment – you cannot claim ignorance with me, not on this.”</p><p>He’d read books on enchantment when he was a kid.</p><p>He remembered, distantly, how much it had once interested him – he’d gotten into it more as a teenager, had taken books out of the home library and learned the practical stuff. He wasn’t great at magical theory, and a lot of the descriptions of magic assumed that someone else was giving you practical lessons, but he’d picked up enough – he could keep his wine cool or keep his lunch hot, he could lock a door, he could make an object unobtrusive, he could light a room or mark a spot. Nothing complicated, nothing extremely ornate, but he could do the basics, and he could do them well.</p><p>What Jean-Pierre did…</p><p>It was the difference between a kid making a circuit with a battery and a lightbulb, and an electrician wiring the whole Sydney Opera House.</p><p>He wouldn’t call himself an enchanter.</p><p>Aimé had never been allowed in the room when his dad was working, and while he remembered the glimpses he sometimes caught of his father’s office, the complex strings of enchantments pencilled on wax paper so that he could layer them and test them, the little doll houses on which he’d check if they worked, but he’d never really seen him <em>do</em> it.</p><p>It was different, watching Jean-Pierre. It was never something private for him – it was casual, easy, and he had explained stuff, before, if Aimé had asked. When De had been here, he’d watched Jean and De show things to one another, too, had seen the way they would pick up each other’s work and ask how they’d done it, why they’d done it that way.</p><p>If he’d talked to his father like that…</p><p>It wasn’t as if the man would <em>hit</em> him, but the reaction would have been fucking icy, to say the least.</p><p>“I can fix it for you,” Jean-Pierre said. “If you want me to. I do not want to take your apartment from you, Aimé – I would have no use for it.”</p><p>“You don’t want me hanging around here so much, huh?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre frowned. It was a subtle expression, a little downturn of his pretty lips, a furrow of his handsome brow. “You would have me barred from your flat?”</p><p>“No,” Aimé muttered, curling a hand in Jean-Pierre’s hair, stroking through it, “but it’s different, isn’t it? Me hanging around here versus you at mine?”</p><p>“Why?” Jean-Pierre asked, tilting his head further into Aimé’s fingers, closing his eyes and arching into the touch like a cat seeking more affection. “Because of Colm?”</p><p>“No,” Aimé muttered, scratching loosely over Jean-Pierre’s scalp. It wasn’t Colm – his dad knew where the apartment was, and he knew he or his mother could show up at any time, but that wasn’t the only thing. Colm was right – it was his dad’s apartment, he owned it, and Aimé just lived in it.</p><p>Jean-Pierre could change the wards, but it would just be a stopgap, in the event.</p><p>“Do you think of God as your father?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“He’s your father too,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé let out a low, irritated sound, tugging on Jean-Pierre’s hair and making him open his eyes and laugh, smacking his knee. “We joke it about it, from time to time. People ask the nature of Asmodeus and Colm’s relationship to me – they are confused when they see us, three men with such different skin tones, different accents, different features. We say that we share a father: it is true. But I do not think it comparable to your relationship with yours. Does he frighten you?”</p><p>“My father?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Aimé inhaled, slowly, feeling the air slowly sink down his throat, felt his chest inflate, concentrated on that sensation as he held his breath for a second. “Not like you think I do. I don’t think that he’s gonna hit me, or say anything that’ll hurt me. I’m not scared about him killing me, or having me killed – I don’t think he <em>wants</em> to do that. I just think he’ll do it if I don’t become what he wants.”</p><p>“I don’t disbelieve you,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “I have done my own research into your father, Aimé – I hope this does not surprise you. Luc Deverell is an infamously consummate businessman. You know when your great grandfather headed the business, it was as simple as touch locks and strengthened doors. Your father, when he joined your grandfather, innovated – like many businessmen do, he did so with a mix of personal creativity and theft. The result is a security empire, and your father considers himself emperor.”</p><p>A sort of cold, uncomfortably slow fear began to trickle down Aimé’s spine, and he stared down at Jean-Pierre’s beautiful face. His expression was entirely casual, innocent, and not, Aimé thought, in the faux way he sometimes looked innocent.</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said quietly. “Have you been researching my dad so you can kill him?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre dragged himself up and out of Aimé’s lap, turning to kneel before him on the bed, and his expression was entirely serious, a vision of consternation, as he met Aimé’s gaze and shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically. “No, Aimé, I would never, not without your express permission. He is your father – it is your unimpeachable right to kill him yourself.” After a second, Jean-Pierre added, presumably in response to Aimé’s stunned expression, “Or let him live.”</p><p>“Or let him live,” Aimé repeated slightly breathlessly, and Jean-Pierre actually looked nervous for a moment, bit the inside of his lip, tilted his head slightly to the side: his fingers tapped quick patterns upon his own knees even as he leaned in closer to Aimé, so that Aimé could take in that familiar scent of frankincense.</p><p>“Your father is not the sort of man Colm and I would be contracted toward. We target people of means, yes, but only those doing direct harm to others – to hoard wealth is in itself a form of violence but we are constrained to some extent by the oversight of the Embassy. There are murders, assassinations, that we can get away with without causing undue stress upon our people. Colm and I both, of course, are capable of making a death look like an accident, but as I say, Luc Deverell is your father. He is within your… territory.”</p><p>“So my dad isn’t a trafficker or a murderer, but if he was, you’d kill him?”</p><p>“You think I do not respect what is yours.”</p><p>“No,” Aimé corrected him slowly, trying his best to be patient, because Jean-Pierre looked offended, looked <em>confused</em>, and it was crazy to him that the angel seemed confused about entirely the wrong things. “No, that’s… That’s not it. I don’t— I don’t want to be responsible for someone dying. I don’t want you to kill anyone and think it’s on my behalf – I don’t want that on my conscience. You understand that?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre inhaled, leaning back on his heels, and he looked at Aimé with a neutral expression on his face – there was no judgement in his face, no coldness, only an expression of engagement, interest.</p><p>“Do you think me a monster?” Jean-Pierre asked softly. “Because I have taken lives?”</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>,” Aimé didn’t say. The word burned in his mouth, almost ready to fall off his tongue, but he didn’t actually lend it voice, just held it in his mouth, rested between his lips, heavy as a bullet. He didn’t want to say it – he wasn’t sure if it was actually <em>true</em>, for one thing, if he really thought Jean-Pierre was a monster, if he still believed it, but more than that, he didn’t want to say it and see Jean-Pierre’s face crumple, see him look <em>hurt</em>.</p><p>“I don’t get you,” Aimé said in a low voice. “It’s easy for you, killing people – you don’t have a risk of dying. You don’t know what being afraid of dying is like.”</p><p>“A curious thing for a suicidal man to say,” said Jean softly.</p><p>“People who are suicidal don’t really want to die, Jean,” Aimé said. He was surprised by how calm he felt, how much he <em>didn’t</em> feel like panicking. “It’s just the only escape route we feel like we have left.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre reached for Aimé’s hands, holding them loosely in his own lap, and as he stroked his thumbs delicately over the scars on Aimé’s wrists, it tickled, made Aimé fidget, and then sigh. Jean-Pierre’s gaze was far away, focused on something in the middle distance.</p><p>“You ever wish you could?” Aimé asked. “Die?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s brow furrowed. His lips pressed tightly together – he didn’t meet Aimé’s gaze, but he tipped forward, rested his chin against the crook of Aimé’s neck and slowly clambered into his lap, wrapped his arms around his neck. Aimé’s slid his own hands around Jean-Pierre, crossed them over his lower back and buried his face in Jean-Pierre’s hair, inhaled.</p><p>“I would not have you trapped with me,” Jean-Pierre mumbled against Aimé’s shoulder. “With no other home to go to, if you found yourself tired of me.”</p><p>“When have I ever said I’m tired of you?” Aimé asked.</p><p>For a long while, Jean-Pierre didn’t say anything. The two of them sat there for a pretty long time, wrapped around each other, and Aimé wanted, like always, to ask questions – if he’d wanted to die when his lovers had died, if any of his lovers had ever got tired with, but given that every question he had amounted to “why are you the way that you are, ange?”, he didn’t want to voice any of them.</p><p>“There are failsafes in the enchantment,” Aimé said finally. “Tamperproofing.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s chuckle was dangerous, and when he leaned back, he had a sort of smug, superior expression on his face that made Aimé shiver. “You think I could not circumvent such measures, hm?” Jean-Pierre’s thumb slid over Aimé’s cheek, where stubble was itchy as fuck as it started to grow back, replacing the beard he’d let Jean-Pierre shave away. “And I could show you how to best them, too. You are good at enchantment, Aimé. You do not have need of your father’s tutelage to be great.”</p><p>“I don’t want to be an enchanter,” Aimé said. “You know that, right? I don’t want to do what he does.”</p><p>“If you wish,” Jean-Pierre murmured after a moment’s thought, “I can adjust the ward structure without teaching you as I go – I can do it, and key it to you. I merely thought you would like to learn,”</p><p>“I do,” Aimé said. “But you’re— You don’t have to teach me, you know,” Aimé muttered. “I’m never going to be a master enchanter like you or De.”</p><p>“I’m not a master enchanter,” said Jean-Pierre, blinking at Aimé. “I’ve never taken the exams, I couldn’t – I would have to study a great deal to meet the requirements. I enchant like a cowboy, Aimé. Asmodeus has said so – I combine styles, I cannibalise past enchantments, I reroute circuits and turn runic faults into traps for would-be intruders. I don’t have the basis in proper theory, in enchantment history, that you do. Someone must be proficient in at least three standardised enchantment styles and literate in five more to be a master – I am not this, Aimé. Sticking with one style, I couldn’t enchant anything more complicated that a lamp.</p><p>“I can teach you how to take apart other people’s enchantment,” Jean-Pierre said softly, “and I can show you the combinations I have learned myself through trial and error – but you could ask any of my brothers, and they would tell you how many times I have burned myself as a result of my haphazard self-tutelage.”</p><p>The weight in his chest wasn’t anxiety anymore, it was something else entirely, and to try to distract himself from it, Aimé kissed l’ange, but when Jean-Pierre kissed him back, it just made the feeling swell, his skin burning under his clothes.</p><p>“Yeah,” he murmured against Jean-Pierre’s mouth. “Yeah, okay. Teach me.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s cupped his jaw and kissed him more deeply, and they fell to the side onto the bed together. For the longest time, they didn’t have sex – they just lay there, kissing, and it was—</p><p>“I’m in too deep with you, Jean,” Aimé whispered after a while, and Jean-Pierre laughed, and held him all the tighter.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>He needed the work.</p><p>It was not the only reason he suggested he do it, but there was not enough challenge in his current revision, not enough for him to really struggle through studying, and he needed something more complex to dedicate himself to, something that would fill up the whole of his senses and his awareness, that he would be able to submerge himself in.</p><p>It was enjoyable, of course, spending time with Aimé, prying back the boards in the flat rafters or insinuating himself into the space in the walls, calling Aimé on his phone and filming the enchantment he was doing while he was doing it, because Aimé could never slide into the gaps in the walls that he could.</p><p>It was—</p><p>Pleasant.</p><p>It was complex work – Luc Deverell used a heavily personalised style of a Welsh-Gallic fusion, and for all it somewhat lacked personally, the actual work was very solid. For any layman uneducated in the process of enchantment, it would be utterly impenetrable, even with certain tools on the market designed for the process; even for someone experienced with enchantment, if they were not proficient in both styles themselves, and had no experience in their combination, it would pose a challenge almost insurmountable.</p><p>For Jean-Pierre the work was trying, and satisfyingly complicated, but not at all impossible.</p><p>They didn’t talk much as he worked, and in the minutes he took to break, he would sit on the floor of Aimé’s studio or sprawl on one of the sofas, watching Aimé paint.</p><p>There was always a certain way Aimé applied himself to his canvases when he hadn’t touched them a little while – he always rolled his shoulders, rolling his head from side to side, too, before he applied his primer, and he did so so very fast one could scarcely make out the brush. He spent some minutes deliberating over his colours, pacing slowly before his shelves, but when he had decided, he would whip out tube after tube, stacking them loosely in the crook of his arm and then stepping to his palette.</p><p>“What are you smiling about?” he asked on the third day, as Jean-Pierre rested on the end of the sofa, his chin on top of his wrists and his gaze on Aimé. “I’m not painting you, you know.”</p><p>Tomorrow, they would be going to the museum for the exhibition Aimé had mentioned it, and while Jean-Pierre had no particular desire to spend an afternoon about vampires and the other more insufferable immortals who entertained themselves by collecting art, that Aimé was excited, that he was interested, was enough.</p><p>“You need not paint me to worship me. I can smile at the latter even lacking the former,” Jean-Pierre said indulgently, and Aimé laughed, tossing his head back to do so. Shooting Jean an amused look, he balanced his paint palette on one arm as he picked up his glass of wine and took a sip.</p><p>“Sacrilegious,” he said scoldingly, but he toasted Jean-Pierre as he said it, and he proudly wore his lopsided smile. As he put his glass down and went back to his paintbrush, he asked, casually, as though he had only just thought of it, but Jean-Pierre suspected he had wanted to ask for a while, “How are those nightmares coming?”</p><p>He wondered if Colm had mentioned it to Aimé, or if it was simply that Jean-Pierre’s sleep was disturbed of late that had tipped him off, that he woke in the night at times these past weeks, felt the need to crawl closer to Aimé and huddle further beneath the blankets.</p><p>Most likely, he was asking because last night, Jean-Pierre had woken in bed to find that Aimé wasn’t beside him anymore, and he had dragged Aimé’s duvet from the bed and crawled to where Aimé was sitting up with his laptop in his lap, and laid silently on the sofa beside him.</p><p>“They’re coming,” Jean-Pierre said, shrugging his shoulders from beneath that same duvet.</p><p>“What are they about?” Aimé asked. Still casual, still not meeting Jean-Pierre’s gaze and focusing on his canvas, as though it would be easier for Jean-Pierre to answer that way – and it was.</p><p>“Past lovers,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “Seeing them… die. And the aftermath of knowing that they are dead. In my dreams, I am confused, caught between epochs, as a ghost between the places it haunts, the events it plays out again and again. And other times, I am tethered in a prison not of my own making.” Most times, actually.</p><p>“When you were in jail after trying to kill King Arthur?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre nodded.</p><p>“Colm said you were in solitary for that,” Aimé said. He wasn’t quite able to retain his casual tone now, and although he tried to keep his gaze on the canvas, his eyes kept flitting to Jean-Pierre, only for a moment each time, but too obviously not to notice.</p><p>“Mostly,” Jean-Pierre said quietly.</p><p>He remembered it very well, more vividly than he remembered most of his life – long, long hours in a grey-bricked room slightly too cold to be comfortable, no windows, no entertainment, nothing. All he had was a stone bed with a thin mattress and an even thinner blanket, a cold shower head, a simple toilet.</p><p>After weeks, he was going mad. After months, he <em>was</em> mad.</p><p>And then the visits had started.</p><p>“Mostly,” Aimé repeated.</p><p>“He started to visit after a year or so,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “Myrddin.”</p><p>Aimé did look at him now, and very slowly, he put down his paint palette, and Jean-Pierre could see his hesitation, the way he was torn between coming directly over to Jean and taking a moment to wash his brush first. He dropped it into his paint water to soak, a middle ground for the moment, and Jean-Pierre dropped heavily into his lap as soon as Aimé sank down beside him.</p><p>“What did he do to you?” Aimé asked softly, even as with both hands he began to massage slow, wonderful circles on his back, and Jean-Pierre screwed his eyes tightly shut, pressing his forehead against Aimé’s thigh.</p><p>“Talked to me,” he murmured. “Watched me, sometimes. Healed me, when I injured myself, but I could never injure myself the same way twice. Fucked me, a few times.”</p><p>“He <em>raped</em> you?” Aimé demanded, his voice high and sharp and biting, but his hands remained calculatedly soft. After Jean-Pierre was silent, uncertain how to respond Aimé said, more quietly, “Fuck. <em>Fuck</em>, Jean. I didn’t… know that.”</p><p>It wasn’t the word Jean-Pierre would use.</p><p>He didn’t know, really, if it was crueller to have fucked him it would have been not to – if Myrddin had never touched him, in all those years he was locked in that dank little cell, he thought he might have split himself to pieces in the aftermath. Six years tethered to one man, in such a way as to make no other man seem alive…</p><p>“I begged him, at the time,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “I thought he would stay longer. I could not bear the loneliness, the solitude, that came after a visit of his, so short as it was – I thought if only I could please him, he might stay, if not let me free. Myrddin would leave me alone for weeks at a time – for months, sometimes. When Asmodeus finally came for me and brought me home, I hardly thought that it was real. For nearly a week, I would not let him go. I didn’t dare.”</p><p>“I’m surprised Asmodeus didn’t kill him,” Aimé said, and he said it so tightly, with a sort of sharpness to it, a jaggedness, that Jean-Pierre flattened himself further against the sofa, arching his shoulders into Aimé’s hands and squeezing his thighs. Aimé had told him he didn’t want to kill anyone himself, but there were moments, from time to time, where he seemed so <em>close</em> to changing his mind…</p><p>And Jean-Pierre liked those moments very much.</p><p> “There are limits to what even Asmodeus can do without retaliation,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “He could undoubtedly kill the king regent with ease, but there would an answer – it would affect the Celestial Embassy. It would affect angels the world over.”</p><p>“You’ve never killed a king or queen on the throne?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre thought of Rupert, of blood bubbling up from the base of his throat, of the choked gurgle that sounded from his mouth, his shocked eyes, the screaming…</p><p>“Yes, a few times,” he said. “Mundie royalty, for the most part, but not often. It is often best to retain the enemy one knows than to destabilise things in such a way that things will change – to kill the monarch on the throne would lead to another, for the most part. But kill the direct descendants, and when comes that first royal’s death, the people will doubt the inheritor’s legitimacy – their bloodline is too distant, they are surprised by their ascension, they know now how to cope.”</p><p>He reached back for Aimé’s hand, pushing it under his blouse, and obediently, Aimé stroked his fingers over Jean-Pierre’s back, pressing hard where he found muscle and making him grunt softly, turning to liquid over Aimé’s thighs.</p><p>“Why kill Arthur, then?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Myrddin is regent because Queen Gwenhwyfar declared him so before her death, that he should rule until Arthur wakes. But to kill him would ensure he would not wake.”</p><p>“So?” Aimé asked. “That’s no guarantee Myrddin would be dethroned. He’s ruled Cymru-Loegr for like, what, seven hundred years?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre sighed as Aimé rubbed at the back of his neck, pressing down hard on the muscle he found there. “I wanted to see what would happen,” he mumbled, and Aimé let out a low, dry laugh.</p><p>“Right,” he said quietly. “Right.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre fell asleep, a little while after that – he dreamt not of killing Rupert, not of being imprisoned alone, not of lovers being dead, but of Jules and Aimé both. He dreamt of them sharing a bottle of wine, and talking philosophy as Jean-Pierre laid on the floor with Anicroche.</p><p>It was a nice dream, pleasant.</p><p>When he woke, he found that Aimé had wrapped him in the duvet and put him in one of the tub chairs, and he had carried the chair up to his painting space, knocked a few extra windows ajar and turned the external fan on, so that Jean-Pierre wasn’t unduly affected by the paint fumes, sitting so close.</p><p>Jean-Pierre closed his eyes when Aimé turned toward him, and even as Jean-Pierre feigned continued sleep, Aimé touched him gently, touched the side of his cheek.</p><p>He was in a good mood, Jean-Pierre thought, and drunker than when Jean-Pierre had fallen asleep: he sang to himself, low and hoarse and not so much off-tune as entirely flat, <em>La Complainte du partisan</em>. It was a wholly ugly sound, and Jean-Pierre basked under it, let it envelop him.</p><p>It was a true lullaby, in a way – he slept deeply on its wings, and did not dream at all.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“I don’t want to go,” Jean-Pierre complained. “Aimé, it is <em>raining</em>.”</p><p>Aimé picked up the battered umbrella hanging from the back of the door, and Jean-Pierre looked at it as though it were the most odious object in existence; Aimé next picked up his yellow plastic raincoat, a silly thing he’d picked up for a Halloween party a few years ago, and picked Jean-Pierre’s wrists up like he was a doll, dressing him in the coat like his very own murderous <em>Barbie</em>.</p><p>“We’ll get wet,” Jean-Pierre whined. “Can’t we get a taxi?”</p><p>“I have an umbrella charm on my bike,” Aimé said, tipping l’ange’s mouth up to his and kissing his lips before he drew away, tugging on the anorak he tended to actually wear on rainy days.</p><p>“Is it good?” Jean-Pierre asked doubtfully.</p><p>“I don’t know, Jean, I’ll have to decide after you’ve given your critique,” Aimé said, and as Jean-Pierre slid past him, moving stroppily toward the door, Aimé saw the snatch of hidden smile in the hallway mirror, the proof that Jean-Pierre was putting on his brattiness just for the fun of it.</p><p>Aimé slapped his arse as he walked past, and Jean-Pierre gasped, but shot him a delighted look, and Aimé shook his head, laughing to himself, as he slung his satchel over his shoulder and pulled his coat onto the other arm, walking beside the angel and pressing on his hips, moving him toward the door.</p><p>It felt better, being in the flat and knowing that his dad couldn’t just walk in anymore – Jean had even sorted the downstairs door so that only Aimé and the angels could come in and out, although Jean-Pierre had regretted this as soon as he ordered a takeaway and had to walk all the way downstairs to get it.</p><p>(He didn’t: Aimé did.)</p><p>Jean-Pierre had slept okay last night too, he thought, although late in the morning, while Jean-Pierre was dozing instead of watching his TV show, he’d jolted suddenly and grabbed for Aimé as soon as he realised Aimé was close to him.</p><p>He’d been doing that a lot lately. It bothered Aimé more than the nightmares themselves – Jean-Pierre had always liked to be where people were, had never liked to be on his own, but he seemed more sensitive to it than usual, and it was worrying.</p><p>In the lift, Jean-Pierre idly scrolled through his phone, and then he laughed lowly.</p><p>“Asmodeus is Singapore now,” he said, and then tilted his phone toward Aimé, showing a picture of Asmodeus in between a pair of angels that were so short – or, in De’s case, so average-sized – that their heads were in line with his breast, and all three of them were smiling into the camera. Asmodeus was wearing a very tight, wet t-shirt.</p><p>“Why are his clothes wet?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Oh, I don’t know,” Jean-Pierre said, shrugging. “Probably to show off his tits.”</p><p>“And there was me thinking that was just a side-effect,” Aimé replied, and Jean-Pierre laughed, leaning into him a little. When they stepped outside of the building, Jean-Pierre lingered under the little glass-roofed hall outside of doors as Aimé jogged over to the bike rack to unlock his bike, because God forbid Jean-Pierre walk thirty feet under the rain – and he was smiling about this even as he did it, because it was infuriating, and it should have irritated him, but it was—</p><p>Well.</p><p>Aimé disliked the word <em>cute</em>, and he definitely didn’t think the word <em>cute</em> should be applied to feral revolutionaries full of bullets and assassination credits, but unfortunately, it did sometimes apply.</p><p>It surprised him when his father’s hand grabbed his shoulder to turn him around.</p><p>“Get the <em>fuck</em> off me,” Aimé snapped out, twisting his arm around and shoving the other man back: his father was a big man, taller than Aimé, but he couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag even if he wanted to, and he stumbled back from him, set off balance. “Christ, the fuck is wrong with you?”</p><p>“You don’t answer your phone,” his father said, “you lock me out of <em>my</em> building, for all I know, you’re <em>dead</em>—”</p><p>“Well, I’m not dead, but thanks for your concern,” Aimé said, tugging his chain free and sliding his bike out from the rack.</p><p>“You might be soon,” his father said, walking beside him – he didn’t have a coat on, looked like he’d run out of his car, so that his jumper and his shirt were getting soaked under the heavy shower. “You don’t have any idea what you’re taking up with, Aimé – I know I’ve been distant with you, from time to time—”</p><p>Aimé started laughing.</p><p>“—but that <em>angel</em> will kill you with everyone watching and won’t even bat an eyelid.”</p><p>“Good afternoon, Monsieur Deverell,” Jean-Pierre said cheerfully, with a little wave. “Isn’t it lovely weather we are having?”</p><p>“Aimé,” his father said seriously, grabbing Aimé’s shoulder again so that Aimé caught his father’s gaze. It actually made him stumble, the look on his father’s face, the turn of his mouth, the wideness of his eyes, the grave expression: he looked seriously, genuinely worried, <em>frightened</em>, and Aimé felt an uncomfortable tug in his chest. His father had never looked at him like that before. “Your mother is beside herself with worry,” he said softly, seriously, almost pleading, “crying all the time, certain we’ll be pulling you out of a gutter or seeing your corpse on the front of a paper. You can’t <em>trust</em> this man, Aimé. Please, I know you don’t trust me, and I’m sorry for that, I am, but please, we just want to keep you safe—”</p><p>Aimé slid out from his father’s grip again, getting astride his saddle, and he leaned back as Jean-Pierre slid onto the bike behind him, wrapping his arms around Aimé’s waist and resting his chin on his shoulder.</p><p>Aimé didn’t say goodbye as he made his way into the cycle lane, and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he glanced back and saw his father staring after him, his greying hair soaked to his head.</p><p>“You were not expecting that,” Jean-Pierre said quietly in his ear.</p><p>“Nah,” Aimé muttered. “New on the old man’s list of tactics. Don’t worry about it, ange.”</p><p>There was a twisting anxiety in the base of his belly as they came into the museum, not to do with Jean-Pierre, really, not worrying about Jean-Pierre hurting him permanently, but just <em>guilt</em> for not having his phone, guilt for avoiding them contacting him, and when they got to the museum, he was grateful for the fact that vampires had no anxiety about day drinking whatsoever.</p><p>The Irish Museum of Fae &amp; Magical Art was across one of the finely gardened squares that adjoined the central witches’ market – the magical epicentre – of Dublin. There were two cores of non-fae magical life in the city – there was Mórrigan’s arcade, which was on the other side of the city centre, a tram’s ride away, and this one: this area Aimé would call more cosmopolitan, and Colm would call (and had called) “full of rich cunts and Protestants”.</p><p>Aimé had made a very deliberate choice not to ask <em>any questions at all</em> about this particular statement, and luckily, Jean-Pierre, who hadn’t been paying any attention, had changed the subject by coming into the room with Peadar wrapped around his neck, his face buried in the cat’s fur.</p><p>It was an ugly building, made of a sort of corpse-grey concrete, four storeys high and with not enough blue glass to make up for the colour of the walls, but once you were inside, it was wonderful – the galleries were high-ceilinged and labyrinthine, easy to get lost in, and they shuffled and updated the exhibits regularly, so that whenever you came in, nothing was where it had been last time.</p><p>Aimé had heard from professors in the college that there was a lot of professional rivalry between the two main curation departments, one being all fae and the other being a mix of humans, vampires, and one long-suffering demon called Tycus that Aimé had actually met before – they’d had a drunken argument about whether Van Gogh had killed himself or been murdered in an underground pub on Grafton Street. This rivalry was apparently why the galleries were shuffled around so much, because people kept arguing about what should go where, and he liked it a lot.</p><p>“Absinthe,” he said as he came to the bar, which mercifully was open whenever the galleries were. Jean-Pierre was standing in the entranceway to the art museum and drying himself off with a few quick enchantments, just in case someone saw him with mildly damp hair. “And a glass of pineapple juice.” He put an extra ten on the counter and said, “Put a cocktail umbrella or something in it, would you?”</p><p>“In the absinthe too?” asked the barman, raising one pierced eyebrow. His name was Daíthi, a Donegal man with a beard made of steel wool that everyone called BJ, and he knew Aimé well enough to pour the half-pint of absinthe and then grab a bottle of the complimentary Sangioevese at the same time. Aimé shot him a grateful look.</p><p>“I’ll survive without,” Aimé muttered.</p><p>“In the wine maybe?” BJ suggested, holding the umbrella above the glass.</p><p>“Fuck off, BJ,” Aimé said, tasting the fresh sweetness of the absinthe on his tongue, and BJ laughed his dark, shuddering laugh, and sprinkled a few candied rose petals on the top of pineapple juice, sticking a cocktail umbrella and a paper bauble on the side of it.</p><p>“Like that?”</p><p>“Perfect,” Aimé said.</p><p>“What kind of fucking girl is <em>this</em> for?”</p><p>“The kind that’s not a girl,” Aimé said, and leaned back into Jean-Pierre’s hand as it settled on the centre of his neck.</p><p>“Is this for me?” he asked, giving BJ a wide-eyed, delighted look.</p><p>Aimé saw the look on BJ’s face, saw the way he blinked twice, looking between Aimé and Jean like it didn’t quite compute, and then he met Aimé’s gaze and raised his eyebrows further, looking a mix of disbelieving and impressed.</p><p>“No, ange, it’s for me,” Aimé said. “Do you want the absinthe or the red first?”</p><p>“Disgusting,” Jean-Pierre said sweetly, and brought his pineapple juice to his mouth. “Go raibh maith agat,” he said to BJ, who had visibly never heard Irish spoken with such a strong French accent.</p><p>“Go ndéana sé maith duit,” replied BJ confidently, and Jean-Pierre beamed.</p><p>When he started actually talking, asking BJ where he was from and how long he’d been working here – Aimé <em>thought</em>, anyway, because as much as spending time around Colm had taught him more Irish, it still didn’t quite equip him to understand Irish from Jean – BJ let out a delighted little laugh, and chatted merrily away with him.</p><p>Aimé rested his chin on his hand, listening to the two of them talk, and felt the absinthe settle pleasantly in his brain, submerging it and letting him actually relax.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>There were a great many people milling about, drinking wine and making polite conversation, and to Jean-Pierre’s genuine surprise, most of them knew Aimé by name, and greeted him, and asked him questions – asked what he’d been painting recently, if he was finished with school yet, commenting on how well he looked without his beard.</p><p>He didn’t have deep conversations with any of them – it was only casual chatter, small talk between acquaintances, but the mere fact that Aimé was known amongst these people, many of them vampires and artists and sorcerers themselves, and that he knew them in turn, was a pleasure.</p><p>He didn’t introduce Jean-Pierre to them – it didn’t occur to him, Jean-Pierre didn’t think, until Jean-Pierre stood at his shoulder and one of them asked, or cleared their throat to hint.</p><p>Many of them recognised him, of course.</p><p>“Alexandra, it has been such a long time,” said Jean-Pierre, shaking the hand of a strapping woman who had praised Aimé on having had a haircut for once, and he delighted in the slightly frozen look on her face, the uncertainty as she looked between Aimé and Jean-Pierre. He had treated her for broken ribs when she was a little girl – he remembered how livid her skin had felt, how fast her heart had beat, but she was no little girl anymore: she was tall and corpse-cold and dead with the vampiric virus, and her flesh was hard where their hands touched.</p><p>Some of them looked at Jean-Pierre, leaned in to speak quietly, surreptitiously with one another, which he rather enjoyed; several of them leaned to look at his thighs, mostly hidden by Aimé’s raincoat, and he liked that, too.</p><p>An older woman, a vampire, leaned to kiss Aimé on both cheeks, which Jean-Pierre didn’t mind, but then her hand slid from Aimé’s waist down to his arse, and Aimé must have sensed his abrupt rage even as Jean-Pierre approached from behind him. Before Jean-Pierre could lunge for her Aimé had grasped him tightly by the forearms, keeping them held down at his sides, and was saying more loudly than necessary, “Annette, this is Jean-Pierre, my boyfriend.”</p><p>“Oh, aren’t you two just <em>adorable</em>,” said Annette, giving them both a bright and sharp-toothed smile, but Jean-Pierre saw the sudden slight glassiness in her eyes as she took in the look on Jean-Pierre’s face, and she took half a step back from Aimé.</p><p>“A pleasure to meet you, I am sure,” Jean-Pierre said viciously.</p><p>“Aimé and I had a roll in the hay together,” Annette said, and then added quickly, “years ago.”</p><p>“<em>Years</em> ago,” Aimé said in a firm voice, almost directly into Jean-Pierre’s ear, leaning in so that Jean-Pierre would look at his face and holding him tightly until Jean-Pierre relaxed.</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook Annette’s hand without doing her injury, meeting Aimé’s gaze the whole time, and Aimé mouthed – not entirely sarcastically, or so it seemed to Jean – “<em>Bien joué</em>.”</p><p>“It bothers you,” Jean-Pierre said to him as they walked away from her. “That I am protective of you.”</p><p>“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Aimé disagreed, raising his eyebrows. A great deal of light came into the gallery, and Jean-Pierre liked the way it showed the colour in each of his eyes. “I think you come off like a man defending his dung heap from someone looking to steal his gold, but it’s flattering – as flattering as it is, though, I don’t want you to kill anyone when I’m trying to enjoy people’s art, and a lot of these people buy shit from me at Christmas, Annette included.”</p><p>“You would sell your body to sell your art?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“Jean, no one is buying my body. Most people would pay me to put my body away,” Aimé said gravely, squeezing Jean-Pierre’s shoulders. “We slept together once when I was twenty-two, and she grabs my ass when we see each other. She’s not a threat to our marriage vows.”</p><p>“You are making fun of me,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“I usually am, ange, you make it very easy.” As he said it, Aimé brought one of Jean-Pierre’s hands up to his mouth, and brushed his lips over the back of his knuckles, giving him an affectionate look that made Jean-Pierre warm with delight, and he allowed his simmering irritation that anyone should feel entitled to touch Aimé steam away from him. “Okay?”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Calm?”</p><p>“Calmer,” Jean-Pierre said, aware that his voice sounded brittle to his own ears, but Aimé either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it, because he held out his arm and let Jean-Pierre take it.</p><p>He was aware he had a rather shorter fuse than was ordinary for him: he had never had the greatest command of his temper, even when first he Fell, and his ability to keep his hold on it had ebbed and waned with the decades, but it was at its worst when his sleep was disturbed, and he had been sleeping ill of late.</p><p>Even the dreams that didn’t begin with him alone in a windowless room seemed to end that way – dreams of Myrddin, dreams of Aimé, dreams of Rupert, dreams of anyone.</p><p>He had never liked to be alone. It wasn’t natural for an angel, he didn’t think – they were of the <em>Host</em>, after all, a collective, and no matter that they were each deposited now in their separate bodies, their separate selves, that was not to say it was their natural state.</p><p>He wondered if Aimé’s father had really affected him. He had changed the subject so swiftly, and Jean-Pierre didn’t believe his words had stuck, but the anxiety lingered – he wouldn’t kill Aimé, he would never, not unless he— but he wouldn’t, would he? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t ever <em>have</em> to kill him, so it hardly bore thinking of.</p><p>The anxiety lingered, a slithering snake in his veins.</p><p>As Aimé led him through the gallery, he didn’t speak much. He would stop before each displayed piece, painting, sketch, or sculpture, and study it for a few minutes at a time – he said a few things at first, but when it became apparent that Jean-Pierre wasn’t listening, and in truth, wasn’t really seeing much either, he went quiet, but kept stroking an idle line up and down Jean-Pierre’s arm where they walked together, and allowed Jean-Pierre to lean his cheek on Aimé’s shoulder.</p><p>There was something almost meditative in it, no matter that he had to bend tremendously to manage the position: Aimé was warm and solid beside him, and the world narrowed entirely to the sensation of the marble floor clattering quietly under their feet, to Aimé’s skin, the texture of his woollen jumper, the regular stroke of his fingers, the familiar thud of his heartbeat.</p><p>He was almost asleep, as much as he was awake.</p><p>They had been in the gallery an hour or so when Aimé touched his cheek, tapping his fingers against Jean-Pierre’s skin to make Jean-Pierre focus, look at him properly.</p><p>“I’m gonna go get another glass of wine,” Aimé said, in the tone of a man patiently repeating himself, perhaps for the second or third time. “I have to talk to a few people here, people who want to commission stuff or look at what I have for sale. You want to come with me?”</p><p>“Business talk bores me,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“Yeah, sweetheart, I know,” Aimé murmured. “You don’t have to stay, if you don’t want – I can call you a taxi.”</p><p>“I can entertain myself,” Jean-Pierre murmured.</p><p>“What, you’re gonna make friends?” Aimé asked. “You like students and drop-outs, right – is this really your crowd?”</p><p>“Rich people, both actual and metaphorical vampires? No,” Jean-Pierre said, making Aimé snort. “But I might look at some of the art.”</p><p>Aimé narrowed his eyes, looking Jean-Pierre in the face.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“When you say, “look at the art”,” Aimé said, making quotation marks with one hand, a particularly irritating mannerism Jean-Pierre was fairly certain he had never done before meeting Asmodeus, “do you mean you’re gonna sit on that bench over there and look at your phone?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre, who had been examining the very bench Aimé was indicating, drew himself to his full height, and scowled. “You know, Aimé, I am not so shallow a stream as you think.”</p><p>“Oh, aren’t you?” Aimé asked, raising his eyebrows, but he was grinning as he said it, and his hand lingered on Jean-Pierre’s waist like he didn’t want to pull it away. He was more than a little drunk – the wine wasn’t fortified, but the absinthe had been very strong indeed. He had needed it, Jean-Pierre thought, to improve his mood after being accosted by Luc Deverell, and Jean-Pierre itched to press the matter, to <em>ask</em>— “You want another juice?”</p><p>“S’il te plait,” Jean-Pierre murmured, and Aimé patted his cheek and walked away.</p><p>It was cold, without him, and lonely, no matter the crowd.</p><p>Jean-Pierre huddled in his raincoat and glanced to the list of exhibits on the various floors of the museum, his gaze falling on a new exhibit announcement, not to be revealed until December. He touched its little silver plaque, and approached the stairwell.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>He was away from Jean-Pierre longer than he’d intended to be – he ended up in a conversation with a sculptor from Carrickmines at the bar who he vaguely knew, who mentioned that he hadn’t been on St Stephen’s Green like usual, and they ended up talking about… Everything.</p><p>It was weird.</p><p>He knew a lot of the people around here – he knew them by sight or he knew them by name, knew the ones that had bought art from him on St Stephen’s Green or in the witches’ market, knew a lot of the other artists and performers who busked or sold art around – but he’d never actually talked to most of them.</p><p>They’d talked to him, he thought.</p><p>They’d had conversations, they’d made small talk, but it was like he was seeing a lot of them for the first time in a way he never had before – he noticed things about the ways some of the vampires dressed, little flairs that marked them as out of time like certain jewellery styles or tailoring that Jean-Pierre had mentioned while watching historical dramas; he listened more carefully to the languages people spoke with one another, heard the differences between them. Even their faces seemed different to him: he noticed hair and make-up in a way he never had, but he noticed expressions, too, subtle little looks that passed between people, that must always have done so, and that he’d just never noticed.</p><p>He was better.</p><p>It was that, he wasn’t so lacking in self-awareness not to know that – he noticed more because he wasn’t as fucking hammered as he usually was at one of these events, but more than that, he wasn’t as insular, he supposed.</p><p>People talked to him more, and he thought that it was because Jean-Pierre was with him or hovering behind him, or because something had changed in his demeanour, before he realised that it was <em>him</em>: he was asking questions before he even thought about it, asking where people were from, if they missed it, asking people about the stuff in their collection, if they remembered why they’d gotten it, if they preferred this medium to that, if they felt young or old.</p><p>The vampires liked it when he asked them that, it turned out – it made them look thoughtful, made some of them laugh, and it made them look at him like he was <em>somebody</em>.</p><p>Not somebody rich – he’d always been somebody rich.</p><p>But someone with a personality.</p><p>It was new to him. Aimé was still a prick, he knew that much – he knew it in the way some people got pissy with him, the way he said stuff without thinking about it, got sarcastic, got opinionated, like he always did, but it was different now, because they didn’t walk away when he said it, and he didn’t walk away from him, either.</p><p>He wondered if this was what Colm and Jean felt like everywhere they went.</p><p>“Did you see where my boyfriend went?” he asked a passing waiter laden down with cubes of cheese when he realised he couldn’t see l’ange anywhere: the ice in his pineapple juice was melting, and the glass was wet with condensation. “The hot blond in the raincoat?”</p><p>“He went to peruse the other exhibits some time ago,” the waiter said. “I could not say where he turned to after passing from the main stairwell, though.”</p><p>“No worries, cheers,” Aimé murmured, and went to the stairs.</p><p>There were people in the museum proper, scattered here and there, and for the first time lacking his phone felt like less of a relief and more of an annoyance, because he couldn’t just text l’ange and ask where he was, moving through the labyrinthine galleries, ducking his head into different stairwells.</p><p>He almost walked past the doorway marked off with a pair of red bollards and a sign that said <strong>EXHIBIT CLOSED</strong>, until he firstly remembered who Jean-Pierre was, and secondly, noted the sign outside the doorway, which read:</p><p><strong>ANGELS THROUGH THE AGES, curated with assistance from the Celestial Legation For Angels, Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim, and Powers</strong>.</p><p>Aimé glanced up and down the empty corridor, and then he stepped inside the gallery, hyperaware of the quiet taps his footsteps made on the floor and trying to move more quietly. The gallery was only half-lit, as some of the overhead lights were switched off, and many of the places up on the walls were just empty frames or spaces cleared for art, with no spotlights over them either, but enough light came from the art that was on display already.</p><p>Aimé knew some of the pieces – it looked like they’d curated a mix of work by angelic artists and other magical artists who depicted them, and he noted some pieces that were famous and on loan from museums in France and Italy.</p><p>He saw l’ange at the end of the long corridor that made up the bulk of the gallery, standing before a huge painting of one he’d looked at when he was first getting into painting at leaving cert level – it wasn’t itself a piece he was really into, but painted in 1971 by Theodule Schafer, it had kind of made him aware you could still do oil paintings, even though the Renaissance had been and gone. He had never seen it in person – it was normally on display at a magical modern art gallery in Berlin – and it was so much bigger than he’d ever realised, the canvas easily fifteen feet high, and Jean-Pierre, standing on the floor in front of it, his raincoat shining under the spotlights, looked tiny in comparison.</p><p>Aimé walked forward, looking up at the familiar brushstrokes showing the crowd, all of them looking up to the parapet that the short-lived king – he couldn’t remember his name, Ronald or Robert or Rupert, something along those lines – standing on the balcony.</p><p>The king’s crown was just in the process of falling away from his muss of chestnut red curls, each lovingly depicted in curving movements of the brush, and his skin had an unhealthy pallor from the jaw downward, his eyes wide and full of tears, his mouth fallen open.</p><p>Just behind him stood the titular <em>L’ange de la mort</em>, a serene smile pulling at his pretty pink lips, his hand settled on the king’s shoulder, his dagger wrenching a huge slit in his neck and sending blood washing over his coronation suit in a waterfall of red oil paint.</p><p>Aimé’s gaze slipped back to l’ange in the painting.</p><p>He stared at his well-curved jaw, the bright blue of his eyes, the golden shine of his hair on his shoulders and the burnished gold of his wings, and then his gaze flitted down to the golden armour he wore, the way it was polished to a shine. He had seen that armour.</p><p>There was a pit in his stomach as Jean-Pierre turned around, his raincoat shining under the light and giving him a sort of halo as he turned to look at Aimé, a soft smile on his face not unlike the one he wore in the portrait.</p><p>The only difference in their faces, half a century apart, was in the bullet scar that shone on Jean-Pierre’s cheek.</p><p>“Did you pose for that?” he asked weakly, and Jean-Pierre’s smile faded into a small, pensive frown, and he looked back at the portrait over his shoulder.</p><p>“No,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t like these paintings.”</p><p>“Thought you liked being painted.” Aimé’s mouth was dry, and his heart was pounding in his chest, threatening to burst up and out of his throat to settle in his mouth, to knock his teeth out, maybe, and all of a sudden, he felt very sober, and very sick. This was what his father had meant, then, saying that Jean-Pierre would kill him.  </p><p>“I do,” Jean-Pierre whispered, but then he crossed his arms loosely over his chest, and he walked closer to Aimé, his hands slid under his armpits as though to keep them warm. He looked sad – not ashamed, but sad. “But not that. Asmodeus’ petit ami, the antiques dealer in Nottingham, he acquires the ones he can for me, but ones like this belong to the Embassy. This portrait, the Schafer, it ordinarily hangs in Berlin, but its papers reside in Harare.”</p><p>Aimé swallowed.</p><p>“I didn’t know that was you,” he said. “I didn’t know you were the angel that King, uh, King—”</p><p>“Rupert,” said Jean-Pierre. “His name was Rupert. It was me.” He reached out, Aimé thought to took his hand, and he flinched without meaning to: the glass of pineapple juice Jean was reaching for slid out of his hand, and Jean-Pierre caught it with an inhumanly fast movement of his hand, not even spilling a drop.</p><p>Jean-Pierre stared down at the orange liquid, his expression solemn.</p><p>L’ange de la mort had been King Rupert’s lover. Aimé knew that – they’d been lovers, fiancés due to be married, and l’ange had killed him at his coronation, he <em>knew</em> that, and how had he never connected it in his head? How had he never thought about it, never connected the dots, never realised even when he saw the fucking armour in the cellar?</p><p>“I would like to go home now,” Jean-Pierre said quietly.</p><p>“Okay,” Aimé assented woodenly, unable to say anything else. He felt numb with the shock, the distant fear, fear the likes of which he’d never felt before, even when he realised Jean-Pierre was a killer. “Okay.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Colm was not there when they arrived home – he had left a note saying he was at Padraic and Bedelia’s – and after they ate, they went straight to bed. Aimé was very quiet after the gallery, and Jean-Pierre felt a sort of horrible dread all through him, on top of the sadness he had felt, looking at the portrait of himself and Rupert.</p><p>He really did dislike that painting.</p><p>He did not turn the television on, just crawled on top of Aimé’s chest, and Aimé let him, wrapped his arms loosely around Jean-Pierre’s lower back and stroked his skin, let Jean-Pierre rest his cheek on Aimé’s breast.</p><p>“Weren’t you gonna marry him?” Aimé asked. It was the first time he’d said something with more than one syllable in it since they’d gotten home, and Jean-Pierre pressed his cheek harder against Aimé’s chest, squeezing his arms around Aimé, holding onto him tightly. “Rupert?”</p><p>“We were affianced,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “He… It was… Aimé.”</p><p>“Yeah, Jean?”</p><p>“I didn’t know what he was when I met him,” Jean-Pierre said lowly. “It was in the aftermath of the second war, and things were being rebuilt, magical and mundie, and he… He was a lawyer. We did not have what are called human rights at that time, but this was the area for which Rupert was truly intended, I think. There was in that area of Bavaria a want for a, you know, micronation? You know the history.”</p><p>“Not really,” Aimé said.</p><p>“It was to be a small republic, magical, the history does not matter – what matters is that Rupert’s maternal uncle, Godard, wanted Rupert to lead, and the people loved Rupert, he was… charismatic, sweet, kind. Very kind. Rupert was descended, very distantly, from Louis XIV, and Godard said it would lend more legitimacy to have a king, for him to be king. He asked me if it was okay, if I would marry him anyway. He knew I had killed nobles in France, he knew this. He <em>knew</em>…”</p><p>He remembered it.</p><p>He hated the way he remembered it, hated the way Rupert had spoken about it, pacing in their bedroom as Jean-Pierre sprawled on the bed, murmuring to himself. Rupert himself had spoken of this with Jean-Pierre – he had no more belief in the Divine Right of Kings than he did that the moon was made of cheese, but he was willing to attest to his royal blood, to be crowned a king, if it meant a quicker route to legitimacy, to recognition in the global community, and Jean-Pierre had listened as he had explained.</p><p>He had never protested, had he? He had never told Rupert he would kill him. He had never said.</p><p>He had not been able to say: he had tried, and his mouth had been frozen, his tongue caged by his teeth.</p><p>How many times had he wished, at the time, that Rupert would change his mind, that he would renege?</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said, pushing Jean-Pierre’s face up to look at him, and he wiped Jean-Pierre’s tears delicately away from his skin with the pads of his thumbs.</p><p>“So you killed him,” Aimé said.</p><p>“I didn’t mean to,” Jean-Pierre said quickly, sharply, hearing his voice crack. “Not— not the way I did it, I didn’t mean to. They were cheering so loudly, there was so much <em>noise</em>, and he was saying my name—”</p><p>“He mentioned you in his speech,” Aimé reminded him.</p><p>“And he shouldn’t have, and I should have left, I should have gone as soon as he first told me, Aimé, but I didn’t, I didn’t want to be…”</p><p>“On your own,” Aimé said when Jean-Pierre didn’t finish the sentence for a few seconds. “You didn’t want to be on your own, so he told you.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook his head, letting out a horrible, wracking sob that dragged at his throat, and Aimé pulled a tissue out of the box on the side table without pushing Jean-Pierre off him, bringing it up to wipe at his face.</p><p>“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” Aimé said in a low voice. “I’ve got you, Jean, I got you. How soon after Myrddin was this?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre remembered the way Rupert had looked at him as he fell, and he cried harder, now, and Aimé sat up, dragging the blankets up around them, wrapping them around Jean-Pierre, and he tried to dry his tears, even as he let out low, hushing sounds against Jean’s hair. He was gentle, impossibly so, and Jean-Pierre held onto him tightly.</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said. “Can you answer me, sweetheart?”</p><p>“Asmodeus got me out of Camelot in ’46. I met Rupert in ’47, and we were together until his coronation in ’51.”</p><p>“Okay,” Aimé said quietly. “Okay.”</p><p>“Do you hate me now?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“No, ange, I couldn’t hate you, I’ve told you that,” Aimé whispered, wiping his eyes again, reaching up to stroke through his hair. “I just didn’t know that was you, and it surprised me – and you weren’t in your right mind at the time, huh? And they put you in front of a firing squad for it?”</p><p>His thumb touched the scar on Jean-Pierre’s cheek, and Jean-Pierre nodded.</p><p>“Would you do it again?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “Not Rupert. I would have— I would have told him not to. I would have left. I would have told him that if he declared himself king, I would kill him. It is not killing a king I regret – it is that I allowed one to be made before me, of a man I loved.”</p><p>Aimé held him tightly, and Jean-Pierre’s sleep, when it finally came, was surprisingly deep, and peaceful.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>He waited until he was absolutely certain Jean-Pierre was asleep before he got out of bed, packed his clothes and his laptop into his satchel, and silently went down the stairs. He was unbelievably lucky that Colm wasn’t home, or he wouldn’t have been able to do this, actually slip out without someone asking him about it, and when he cycled home, it was in cold, wet hair, clammy, uncomfortable, but without any actual rain.</p><p>He was in his flat for less than half an hour.</p><p>He called the taxi while he was dropping the last of his clothes into the case, and he pulled his passport out of the back of a drawer and his money case at the same time – cash was good, just in case.</p><p>“What’s the next plane going to France?” he asked at the central desk in the Departures terminal, and the woman blinked at him for a second before searching through the computer system in front of her.</p><p>“Uh,” she said, “there’s the 11:50 going to Grenoble, but the next one for Paris is—”</p><p>“Grenoble is fine,” Aimé said. “I don’t have a phone. Where do I buy a ticket?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Good For Him</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>It was a little past nine, and Colm was half-dozing in the chair before the fire with Pádraic, his feet kicked up on the stool. They’d had a huge breakfast, and Pádraic had piled as many rashers in front of him as he’d thought Colm could eat without actually dropping dead, which was a fucking lot.</p><p>Pádraic was leaning back in his big wing-backed armchair, the one that Colm knew Asmodeus had had made for him about fifty years back, so it was wide enough to accommodate his huge shoulders. Colm knew that he took care of it, because he could see the patches where the fabric had been worn and replaced. Pádraic was knitting, his lips thinned and his brow furrowed in concentration as he worked, counting loops and hitches and whatever else.</p><p>Colm didn’t know much about knitting – Jean-Pierre could crochet a little, but he didn’t knit, mostly just did his sewing. Despite Pádraic’s huge fingers, he did very delicate work, knitting the loops of wool very tight and close together, never seeming to miss a stitch, and he didn’t work from any kind of pattern or code, even though it looked like the jumper had a complicated design on the front.</p><p>In a square wicker basket, four feet by two, that rested beside his chair, many similar jumpers were already made and put together. Pádraic always knitted things for the children in his classes coming up to Christmas, and he donated a lot of woollen things to the churches too – he did hats and gloves and things for babies and children.</p><p>George already, Colm had noticed, had a nice heavy cardigan made of soft, dark green wool that he was wearing everywhere as of recent, and mittens and a hat to match. When Colm had mentioned this, Pádraic had grunted noncommittally and started frying more eggs.</p><p>Outside, Bedelia and George were laughing together, and the sound filtered in through the open window: Bedelia still had her trampoline up at the bottom of the garden, in amongst the incredibly overgrown flowers and berry bushes, and she and George were playing on it together. Every now and then, George’s laughter abruptly stopped: he did this when she kissed him.</p><p>“Did you always want children?” he asked Pádraic.</p><p>Pádraic glanced up from his knitting, considering the question for a moment, and then shook his head. Placing his jumper on his knees, where it looked very tiny, he clasped his big hands together for a moment, and then signed, “<em>Liked children. Didn’t want them.</em>”</p><p>“You worked in the NICU ward when you were a nurse, right? De said you did.”</p><p>“<em>Sometimes. I wasn’t a…</em>” He signed something Colm didn’t understand until he spelled it with his fingers: “<em>Paediatric nurse</em>. <em>Why the question?</em>”</p><p>Colm shrugged.</p><p>“<em>How old is your daughter now?”</em></p><p>Colm inhaled slowly, looking to the quiet crackle of the fire beside them, smelling the earthy scent of the turf on the air. “Eighty-three,” Colm murmured. “Her birthday was in January – I went over before we moved from Texas.”</p><p>Pádraic was watching him, his lips curved in a grim smile, quietly understanding, knowing, and Colm reached into his coat pocket, hanging as it was on the side of his chair, and pulled out his wallet. Pádraic had his hand out before Colm had even opened it, and Colm slid out the two photos nestled into little window, handing them over.</p><p>“Ah,” Pádraic said quietly, smiling as he took them, and Colm watched the way he studied them, carefully, keenly. The first one was old and very battered, Colm knew, when Heidemarie was only six and growing too old to be bounced on Colm’s knee, the two of them smiling for the camera, but the other was taken in the sixties, when she was a young woman, and she was grinning as they stood together, holding her dog at the time, a horrible little schnauzer that had been far too big to really be carried, against her chest and leaning her head on Colm’s shoulder. Pádraic handed them back, and Colm slipped them into his wallet.</p><p><em>“No pictures of her in your house</em>,” Pádraic signed. Not judgily – he didn’t mean it like that.</p><p>“In my room,” Colm said.</p><p>“<em>Not the same</em>.”</p><p>“Heidemarie’s a point of contention in our house,” Colm said darkly, and Pádraic frowned at him, his great head tilting slightly to the side.</p><p>“Why?” The singular word was spoken gravely, darkly, and Colm sighed, tugging the kettle off the fire and pouring more tea.</p><p>“Jean,” Colm said. “Why else?”</p><p>Pádraic folded his hands over his belly, leaning back in his chair and for a moment basking in the warm heat of the fire, his head tilted toward the flicker and heat of the warmth that radiated from the hearth. His expression was quietly thoughtful, and he <em>felt</em> pensive, too – Pádraic, as mute as he was, kept his emotions close to his chest, even from people like Colm, so that you had to really concentrate to skim what he was feeling off the top. He had to wonder if George would have become quite so good at it so quickly were it not for knowing Pádraic.</p><p><em>“I like Jean-Pierre</em>,” he finally signed, the movement of his hands slow and measured, with long pauses between phrases. “<em>But he is… controlling.”</em> He thought for a second longer, and then spelled with his fingers, <em>“Mercurial</em>. <em>Aimé seems like a decent sort, for being rich, but Jean-Pierre seems like he needs to be tempered</em>.”</p><p>“He wasn’t always like this,” Colm said quietly. “He didn’t used to be this bad – he was always shitty with his boyfriends, I didn’t meet the first one, but he was always, you know, the way that he is with them. But he never used to be so catty with me, and his temper never used to be this bad, and he never used to freak out so bad, being on his own. Sometimes I feel like he hates me.”</p><p>“<em>He doesn’t</em>,” Pádraic signed. <em>“You know that. It’s your fault, letting him be so jealous of Heidemarie.</em>”</p><p>“My fault?” Colm repeated, copying the sign, too, surprised by how irritated it made him.</p><p>Pádraic shrugged his great, heaving shoulders. “<em>If the shoe fits. You hide pictures of her in your room, you never mention her, never bring her up – have you mentioned her to George? To Aimé? To any of your new friends in the city?”</em></p><p>Colm clenched his fists on the armchair.</p><p>“<em>You let Jean control things,”</em> Pádraic said simply. “<em>It doesn’t come from nowhere</em>.”</p><p>“Dún do chlab mór,” Colm snapped.</p><p>Pádraic made a locking motion over his closed lips, and Colm scowled, crossing his arms tightly over his chest and leaning back in his chair, listening to it creak underneath him.</p><p>“<em>Going to visit her for Christmas</em>?” Pádraic asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm murmured. “I never see her for Christmas itself – she had three sons and a daughter, and two of the sons who were magical, they both died, but Gunther and Angela, they’re married to mundies, and the grandchildren are mundies, so I’m hard to explain. I’ll go at the beginning of December, stay a few days, before I come home. Benedictine is coming for Christmas – she met Bedelia?”</p><p>Pádraic’s expression dropped into a further scowl, and he looked out of the sliding doors to the garden, to Bedelia and George, who were sitting on the edge of the trampoline. George had his hands out, palms up, his eyes closed, and as Bedelia talked, tickling his palms, George was laughing and squirming in his seat.</p><p>“She’s making him name the bones she’s touching,” Colm said quietly. “She’s been teaching him the bones of the hands.”</p><p>“Boy faints for blood,” muttered Pádraic in his quiet thunder.</p><p>“I think he’s okay if it’s on the inside.”</p><p>Pádraic smiled in a tiny way, resting his chin on his knuckles for a moment, and then he signed, “<em>I never wanted her to marry an angel</em>.”</p><p>“They’re not married yet.”</p><p>Pádraic released a low, wordless grumble of disapproval, and Colm laughed, sipping at his tea.</p><p>“<em>At least it’ll mean she’s safe from your Benedictine.”</em></p><p>“Mine?” Colm repeated, and laughed. “Uh uh, you don’t get to put her on me anymore than you can Jean.”</p><p>“<em>And Aimé</em>?”</p><p>Colm inhaled slowly. He knew that Pádraic was changing the subject to avoid talking more about Bedelia – he was protective of her, as any father was protective of his daughter, as was only natural, and Colm knew it had far less to do with any desire to keep Bedelia from dating at all (although he knew that was part of it), and more to do with the way so many angels reacted to people like her. Colm, in his position, probably wouldn’t want to talk about it either.</p><p>“What about Aimé?” Colm asked.</p><p>Pádraic shrugged again. <em>“You said,”</em> he started, thinking for a moment, and then moved his hands very deliberately: “<em>you were worried about him. That he should leave</em>.”</p><p>“He should,” Colm said. “You’ve never seen Jean with his boyfriends – he takes them apart and builds them back brick by brick, so that all they know is him. Fucks with their heads. They worship him, by the end of it – he loves them, of course he does, but… I like this one.”</p><p>Pádraic didn’t sign anything in response to this – he only arched one bushy eyebrow, and Colm clucked his tongue, breaking eye contact.</p><p>“Well, most of them… Manolis knew exactly what he was fucking in for. They threatened each other constantly with knives, slapped each other around, said the worst fucking things they could think of. And Bui wasn’t physical about it, but he was just as bad as Jean was for words: he could be really cold, could cut Jean to pieces with the right few words and leave him sobbing. Benoit was a sweetheart, but he was a masochist, and he said so – he knew from the beginning that Jean-Pierre would hurt him, would fuck him right up, and he invited it. Verbally, he did. Said it was like holding a beautiful knife by the blade.”</p><p>Farhad hadn’t known, of course – but as far as Colm had seen, Farhad was the closest to a normal relationship he’d ever seen Jean-Pierre in, and that was only because he came with an attached expiration date.</p><p>“He should leave,” he said again.</p><p>“<em>Maybe</em>. <em>And when he does?”</em></p><p>Colm’s phone started to vibrate on the system, and Pádraic, as superstitious as anything, crossed himself, and then rose from his seat, holding his hands palms up in the air as he stood and walked away, clapping at the door for Bedelia and George to come inside.</p><p>Colm was initially relieved when he saw that the call was coming from their neighbours across the road, but he still pulled himself to his feet as he answered.</p><p>“Hi, Mrs O’Malley, how’re you doing?”</p><p>“Oh, I’m well, Colm, I’m well now, but it’s only…” The old lady’s voice faltered a bit, creasing in the middle like crinkling paper, and Colm’s hand hovered over the collar of his coat. “Well, Peadar went off on his wanderings, and he’s just come in screaming his wee head off, dragging at me, you know. Tom’s just been across the road to check and we saw your car wasn’t home, but Peadar is really itching to get in. I’m just worried something’s wrong – he’s never acted like this, you know, and he’s bit Tom’s arm when he tried to pull him away—”</p><p>“I’ll be right there,” Colm said quickly, and he shoved his phone into his pocket, dragging his coat.</p><p>“<em>Need help?”</em>  Pádraic asked.</p><p>“I’ll let you know,” Colm muttered, jogging out to the car. As he slid into the seat, dragging his seatbelt on, he dialled Jean-Pierre, but there was no answer – he’d tried to call four times before he got home, and even tried to call Aimé before remembering he’d get no answer, that he didn’t have a new phone yet.</p><p>Tom O’Malley was standing awkwardly on the doorstep when Colm got home, and even from the pavement, he could feel the desperate, complete fury, the agony, the grief, radiating from inside the house, and he swallowed, steeling himself.</p><p>“Colm,” said Mr O’Malley. “Deirdre said she called you—”</p><p>“I’m sure it’s nothing, Mr O’Malley,” Colm said. “Tell her thanks for calling – Jean’s been fostering this queen in heat, I expect Peadar’s just up for the ride, so.”</p><p>All the tension went out of the old man in one, and he looked at Colm, relieved. Laughing, he clapped Colm on the shoulder, and looked to Peadar, who was still clawing at their front door in distress.</p><p>“Is that all?” he asked, and chuckled. “Well, that’s alright – our big old tom has some balls on him yet, so he does.”</p><p>“Sorry again to worry ye both,” Colm said, grinning himself, and he picked Peadar gently up, soaking the anxiety out of him and leaving him a little dopey – it’d only last for five minutes, but it would be long enough for the old man to walk him back across the street and lock him in. “Have a good day there.”</p><p>“And yourself, and yourself,” Mr O’Malley said, still laughing to himself as he scooped Peadar’s now purring ginger body against his chest and walked back across the road.</p><p>Colm could not see any sign of Aimé’s bicycle, and nor could he feel the familiar shape of Aimé in the house – what he could feel was Jean-Pierre, a hot burning flame, and he took a second to ground himself on the doorstep before he opened the door and stepped inside.</p><p>The hall was a mess, as he had expected. The hall table had been thrown against one wall, and the bowl that normally held wallets and keys had its contents thrown on the ground, with Asmodeus’ carefully filed pile of alphabetised takeaway menus in similar disarray.</p><p>A look into the living room showed that it was in a similar state: while Jean-Pierre hadn’t, as he had in tantrums passed, smashed any of their dinnerware, one of the armchairs was overturned, and several of the small tables had been similarly overturned.</p><p>Some of the sofas had had their stuffing torn out, the fabric burst and ripped, and Colm could see blood on one of them where Jean-Pierre had obviously caught his arm on a spring, but he doubted it had taken long to heal, because there wasn’t blood stained anywhere else.</p><p>Colm walked up the stairs, and, projecting the most calm he could, opened Jean-Pierre’s bedroom door.</p><p>Jean-Pierre must have run out of steam before he’d come back into his bedroom, because this was surprisingly neat, and Colm knew that in one of his rages he didn’t distinguish between his own possessions and common ones, but most of his books were still on their shelves, but for a few that had been thrown about, and Jean-Pierre had torn apart a few of his own blankets, but hadn’t done anything more dramatic than that. He certainly felt angrier than he ever had before, but perhaps he was <em>so</em> angry he was paralysed quicker, and lacked the energy to rage for as long as usual.</p><p>Jean-Pierre – unsurprisingly – was not in his own bedroom.</p><p>Colm wondered if it should have offended him, upset him, that Jean should choose to hide himself away in Asmodeus’ bed instead of Colm’s own, but any sense of vague jealousy faded when he looked through the ajar door and saw Jean-Pierre fitfully asleep in a nest built of a mix of Asmodeus’ clothes and blankets, and Colm’s own.</p><p>Asmodeus’ drawers and wardrobes had been messily hauled open so that Jean could drag out whatever smelt most like him, but he probably wouldn’t have done that in Colm’s room – Colm guessed from the pile he could see that he’d mostly dragged up the clothes from Colm’s floor and the uppermost layer of his laundry hamper, although he did note that Jean-Pierre was buried under Colm’s duvet instead of Asmodeus’. He hated De’s silk sheets.</p><p>“Hey, Jean,” Colm said gently as he came in, and when Jean didn’t move, he picked up the bottle of pills on the side of the bed, shaking the bottle, but Jean-Pierre had only taken one. He usually medicated himself when he realised he was in too much of a rage to get himself out of it, and this sedative was one he’d been using since the early eighties, a sedative that was hard on the brain and light on the organs, with a name Colm couldn’t pronounce.</p><p>Putting the bottle aside, Colm gently peeled the duvet back off of Jean, who, buried in a cocoon of his own wings, was trembling lightly.</p><p>Colm pulled him up by the hair, reaching underneath him to support his chest, and then he lifted the other angel up, dropping him heavily into his lap. Jean-Pierre’s eyes were staring forward, but when Colm snapped his fingers in front of them, he didn’t react, so Colm reached up and gently dragged them closed, and they stayed like that.</p><p>Colm knew, from unfortunate experience, that a Jean-Pierre sedated would soon be a Jean-Pierre whose sedatives had worn off and was full of rage to be directed at the nearest potential target, but he couldn’t bear to leave his brother when he was like this. He was weak that way.</p><p>He turned them around in the makeshift nest of stolen clothes and layered blankets, resting his head on De’s pillow and rapping the duvet around them both. When he soaked up some of Jean-Pierre’s feeling, the immensity of it, the intensity, actually made him feel sick for a second, but it passed after a moment or two. After dropping a quick text to Pádraic to let him know he was okay, and ask him to tell George not to pop around for a few days, he wrapped his arms tightly around his brother and held him close.</p><p>“Good for him,” he murmured to the emptiness of the room, and felt the weight of Jean-Pierre on his chest.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Mémé</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Aimé was seven years old, and for the first time ever, he had woken up in a country that wasn’t Ireland.</p><p>It was a sunny day, the air dry and warm, and as the boy’s feet, clad in new trainers, thudded against the reddened earth made dry and hot by the sun, it crunched and shifted in satisfying ways. There was a sort of baked dirt smell on the air – there was no clay in it (he knew what earth smelled like when there was more clay mixed in from visiting Mémé’s sister further east before they’d come here), and the air didn’t smell quite as sticky, smelt fresher, but there was more acidity in the air, too.</p><p>It was a little past seven o’clock, and his mother was still asleep, but even though the shutters were closed over the windows, bright light from the shining sun filtered in through the gaps at the top and the bottom, and he was bored of lying in bed.</p><p>He was walking from the little guesthouse, which they normally used to store stuff, and out to Mémé’s house, which was much bigger.</p><p>He’d never been on an aeroplane before that he remembered – his mother said that he’d been to France before and that they’d come on the ferry and landed in Calais, but he couldn’t remember that, because he’d only been a baby.</p><p>He knew Mémé’s voice better than her face, and he still wasn’t used to her face. His mother had photos of her in the house, but they were high up on the wall and he’d never looked at them very closely: Mémé to meet was taller than his mother, and she had strong shoulders and strong arms and skin that looked like tanned leather and age spots on her hands and her wrinkled neck and her cheeks, and when she hugged Aimé she hugged him so tightly he thought his bones would crack, and she kissed his cheeks, and she smelled of dry leaves and dirt and wine.</p><p>“You understand French, boy?” asked Aunt Margot, who was the wife of Uncle Guy, who was his mother’s brother.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “My mother says it’s important I speak French, and my father.”</p><p>Margot clucked her tongue, shaking her head and laughing, and she nudged her two sons, Joseph and Florent, who were bigger boys than Aimé, twelve and fourteen, and they were tall and Florent was starting to grow hair on his face, and Joseph had braces.</p><p>“Listen to him,” said Margot, shaking her head at him, but she was smiling. “Such a Paris accent! We shall fix that. You want breakfast?”</p><p>Aimé nodded his head, and he climbed up to sit at the table with the other boys and Margot, grinning when she set a plate in front of him. No one hovered over him or made him hold his knife and fork differently or say he was eating too fast or too slowly – they just let him eat, and although they all talked very fast, faster than he was used to, he found he could understand most of it.</p><p>“Ah, my special boy!” said Mémé as she came into the room, and when she leaned in, the buried her face in Aimé’s hair and kissed the top of his head, and patted his cheek. Her hands smelt of dirt, and when Aimé looked at them, her fingernails were dirty with the red earth. “You sleep well?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Good, good,” said Mémé.</p><p>They were here for two weeks, because his mother hated all the sound it was making as the builders added on their new conservatory, and she’d said to his father that her mother was “taking advantage of the opportunity”, and Aimé didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he did know it meant his Mémé wanted to see him, and he liked that.</p><p>Whenever they talked on the phone, she seemed like a nice old woman – she wished him happy birthday and merry Christmas and asked if he had liked what she had sent him for both, and he usually did, because Mémé sent him clothes that were warm and didn’t scratch and even though his mother told his nanny that they were ugly, because his grandmother had sent them she had to let him wear them, and she always sent him new pencils and paper and paint and she sent him books that were interesting that were always in French.</p><p>“You’re up earlier than Marguerite,” said Mémé.</p><p>“Not Marguerite any longer, Maman. My name is Margaret,” said Aimé’s mother coldly from the doorway, and Aimé quickly wiped off his hands and got up from the dinner table, but Mémé grabbed him by the back of his shirt before he could get away, and he looked up at her.</p><p>“Plate in the sink, Aimé,” was all she said, though, and after he dropped his bowl into the sink, Margot patted the top of his head, and they let him run outside after the other boys.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>Aimé was fourteen years old, and he couldn’t sleep.</p><p>Sighing, he dragged himself out of bed and sprayed some mosquito spray on his arms, and rubbed it in absently as he padded out of the room, still undressed, and walked outside.</p><p>The lantern was still lit on Mémé’s porch, and wearing only his sandals, having tugged a robe on over his boxers and his t-shirt, he padded across the earth in the yard, to where Mémé was sitting back in her rocking chair.</p><p>“You look like an old man,” said Mémé. “Walking in your dressing gown and your sandals, all tired.”</p><p>“You look like an old woman,” Aimé replied. “What kind of woman actually has a rocking chair on her porch? You from a cartoon?”</p><p>Mémé laughed – it was a good laugh, hoarse and creaking and leathery, a laugh that matched how she looked, and she leaned over to pat the deckchair beside her, which Aimé came toward, and sank down into. Mémé had never remarried, after she and Aimé’s granddad had got divorced – his grandfather always said she was a hard woman, unyielding, but every summer when he visited, usually with his mother, although there’d been one great summer a few years ago where she’d dropped him off before going north to visit friends in Paris, she didn’t strike him as hard at all.</p><p>She was a nasty woman, that much was true, with a sharp streak of humour like a razorblade, but not hard. Not that he thought, anyway.</p><p>“How is school?” Mémé asked.</p><p>“It’s shit,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Your grades are good.”</p><p>“I didn’t say it was hard. I said it was shit.”</p><p>“Old man,” Mémé said wisely. “Will you be the same at thirty-one as you are at thirteen?”</p><p>“I hope I’ll be taller,” said Aimé, and Mémé laughed her creaking laugh, rocking pensively in her chair. It was past two, and she looked tired, bags under her eyes, but she didn’t look like she’d be going to bed soon. “You hate my mother?”</p><p>“Sometimes,” Mémé said. “Not always. Not like she hates me.”</p><p>“She doesn’t hate you,” Aimé said. “She hates where she came from.”</p><p>Mémé looked at him very seriously. “I am where she came from.”</p><p>Aimé considered this, and then, unable to argue anymore, he nodded his head.</p><p>“Do you hate her?” Mémé asked.</p><p>“Sometimes,” Aimé said. “Not like she hates you.”</p><p>“A boy shouldn’t hate his mother,” Mémé said. “Shouldn’t hate school, either.”</p><p>“Anything else I shouldn’t do?”</p><p>“You shouldn’t smoke,” Mémé said.</p><p>“I don’t!”</p><p>“Don’t lie to your grandmother,” Mémé said, and clapped him upside the head. “Florent doesn’t keep track of his cigarettes, but I do. Buy your own.”</p><p>“I’m fourteen, they won’t sell them to me.”</p><p>“Learn to steal them from someone else, then, or stop smoking,” said Mémé, and Aimé laughed, laughed in a way he found he hadn’t in a little while, and he wondered if he’d feel less tired at thirty-one than he did now. “You look sad,” Mémé said. “This is why I say you are like an old man. You are sad like one. They bully you at school?”</p><p>“Why, ‘cause I’m ugly?”</p><p>“You’re not ugly.”</p><p>“Sure, I am,” Aimé said. “I went into a new class this year, and this boy from Clare came up to me, a new boy, and said, are you the French boy? You’re ugly. And I said, okay. And he said, well, aren’t you going to argue with me? And I said, no, I know I’m ugly. Do you know you’re a cunt?”</p><p>Mémé considered this, rocking pensively for a few moments, so that Aimé could hear the regular sound of the polished wood rockers on the wooden floor underneath.</p><p>“What did he say to that?” she asked finally.</p><p>“He actually teared up, like he was going to cry,” Aimé said. “It was unexpected – a little sad. His parents are divorcing – that’s why he moved schools. His mum sent him to ours to show off to his dad, I think, show she could afford a private school. I punched him in the face before anyone else noticed.”</p><p>“That was good of you,” said Mémé. “You two are friends now?”</p><p>“He tried to me,” Aimé said. “Tried to come up after my suspension was over, thank me for saving face. I told him to fuck off.”</p><p>“Why?” Mémé asked. “It’s not like you have many boys lining up to be your friend.”</p><p>“He’s a faggot,” Aimé said.</p><p>“So? Your Uncle Clément lives with his boyfriend in Montpelier. Would you punch him in the face?”</p><p>“I didn’t punch him because he’s a homo,” Aimé muttered. “Just didn’t want to hang out with him.”</p><p>“Maybe that’s why school is so shit for you.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Aimé muttered.</p><p>“You’re nothing like your mother was at your age, you know,” said Mémé. “She wanted to spread her wings and take to the sky – you want to burrow in the earth like a cockroach.”</p><p>“This earth I’d burrow in,” Aimé said. “It’s good earth.”</p><p>“You’re right,” Mémé said, and then she’d patted the back of his hand. It was a little touch, the sort she didn’t too often, but he liked it, when she did. “I wish you could be here more often.”</p><p>“So do I,” Aimé said, and Mémé picked up the bottle of wine from the table, pouring herself another glass, and without asking, she picked up another glass, pouring a little for Aimé, too.</p><p>“You drink wine at home?” Mémé said.</p><p>“Vodka, mostly.”</p><p>“Vodka,” Mémé said, clucking her tongue disapprovingly. “There is no soul in vodka.” She pushed the glass toward him, and he brought it up to his lips, inhaled before he tasted it. It was a young wine, fruity but without much depth, and a little too acidic – it made him wrinkle his nose.</p><p>It wasn’t vinegary, just sharp, a little strong.</p><p>“Not great, is it?”</p><p>“No,” Aimé said, smacking his lips together and trying to get the taste out of his mouth. “Is it ours?”</p><p>“Fuck no,” Mémé said. “Trottier made this – you know, from across town? Their girl is that awful creature with the brown hair, always throws stones at Margot’s cat.”</p><p>“I hate the Trottiers,” Aimé said.</p><p>Mémé laughed. “Me too,” she said, and they clinked their glasses together.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>Aimé was nineteen, and his grandmother was dead.</p><p>He’d walked upriver from the campus, his rucksack on his back, and now he sat on one of the banks of the Lyreen, drinking wine straight from the bottle. Mémé had sent twelve bottles home with him when he’d come back to Ireland, and he’d been saving them for a special occasion – in a week, he’d drunk five, and in his hand was the sixth.</p><p>His head hurt, and his face felt numb even though he wasn’t drunk yet: his chest ached. His father had come by to tell him the news personally, and Aimé hadn’t realised he’d taken Aimé’s passport with him, to insure that Aimé couldn’t back out of his promise not to go to the funeral, and to stay at school.</p><p>He’d be damned if he’d be going to his fucking lectures, though.</p><p>It was late March, and the air was cool and damp, settling on his skin and making him shiver.</p><p>A guard had been by, had shone a torch down at him even though it was six and not yet dark, and when Aimé had asked, dryly, “My dad send you?”, he’d blustered and kept walking, which meant that yes, he had.</p><p>He didn’t drown himself in the river, though.</p><p>Not his style of suicide.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>He had a habit of hiding his passport, these days.</p><p>Ever since his father had pulled that trick after his grandmother had died, he’d taken to making sure his passport was hidden so that no one could steal it off him, but his father had never tried it a second time – and by the time Margot and Joseph and Florent had died (his uncle had already died of an aneurysm in the early noughties), he’d been so ashamed of not being able to go to his Mémé’s he hadn’t even tried to fly out for it.</p><p>The rumble of the plane’s engine was a pleasant rumble underneath him, and he closed his eyes as he felt the plane finally start to lift off the ground, his stomach feeling like it was being flipped inside his torso, that’s strange sensation of upward motion.</p><p>When he was a teenager – once he’d been about fourteen or so – he used to imagine, vividly, all the ways he could die in a plane crash: if the cabin depressurised and his neck got snapped as he was sucked out of a crack in the plane door; if a bird strike led to a sudden engine failure and the whole plane plunged into the ocean; if one of the pilots and he had a shared proclivity for wanting to fucking die, and flew them nose first into a goddamn building.</p><p>None of that had ever happened, of course.</p><p>He couldn’t remember what he’d thought about on plane journeys when he was a little kid – maybe just that he was excited to see his grandmother, or dreading seeing his father, depending on which way he was going. He didn’t think he’d ever just sat like this, and looked at the other people.</p><p>Beside him, to his left, were a trio of older women, all three of them plump and wearing pearls – they were from Marseille, and once they got home to the city, the first thing they were going to do was take a spa break together. When they’d gotten onto the plane, one of them had been on the right hand of the aisle, where Aimé was sitting now, and Aimé had swapped places with the one with the red hair so that she could take the window seat, and all three of them could sit together.</p><p>He didn’t think it would ever have occurred to him to do that before.</p><p>He probably wouldn’t even have noticed that the three women seemed to know each other.</p><p>To his right, there was a woman travelling with her little girl: the girl had was half-asleep, and her mother had bundled up a jacket on the armrest between their seats, so that she could rest her head on her mother’s side, and the girl was asleep almost before they had taken off.</p><p>He wondered what Colm would feel like, sitting on a plane like this. Colm hated flying – he’d told Aimé as much, that he hated the sensation of flying, hated the cabin pressurising, the way it made his ears pop as they gained altitude, but he said it wasn’t as bad as flying with a winged angel. Colm didn’t like heights, but that wasn’t really what he was thinking about – it was more wondering what Colm must feel, packed into a flight, feeling people excited about their holiday or stressed about their business, all those people packed together in tin pipe, thousands of feet above anybody else.</p><p>“Something to drink?” asked the steward. He was a little man, probably the same height as Colm, but he was slim and pretty, had dark hair combed back from his face, a few of the curls falling prettily over his forehead.</p><p>“A glass of red,” Aimé said. “Please.”</p><p>He pulled his card out of his wallet, and the steward bit the inside of his lip, and said softly, “Um, sir, I’m really sorry, our card machine isn’t working—”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” Aimé said, and tugged a note out of his wallet instead.</p><p>“Sorry,” the man murmured again – he had a sweet voice, spoke shyly, and when he asked what red Aimé would prefer, and Aimé told him it didn’t matter, that even a sommelier had no palate at thirty thousand feet, his cheeks went pink, and he laughed, and he looked demurely down at his polished shoes.</p><p>He came back around once, after they’d put the drinks trolley down, ostensibly to check on the cabin just above his head, and sitting as he was in the aisle seat, Aimé had a great view of the way his waistcoat rode up his hips, the way it pulled up his shirt, too, and let him see a tiny hint of creamy skin.</p><p>“How many more times you have to go between Dublin and Grenoble tonight?” Aimé asked, holding his stupid plastic glass against his knee.</p><p>“This is my last flight,” said the steward, and then he pulled his waistcoat down, giving a little shift of his hips. “You staying long in Grenoble?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aimé said. “Gonna just walk out of the airport and find a hotel room.”</p><p>The steward smiled at him – he smiled sweetly, prettily. “Yeah?” he asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said.</p><p>“We’re staying at La Ferme,” said the steward. “Maybe you will, too.”</p><p>“Maybe I will,” Aimé murmured.</p><p>“Are you—”</p><p>Someone further up the cabin had pressed their call button, and he could see the cute, pinched little face the steward pulled, the way he glanced away, and Aimé said, “Go ahead. I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.”</p><p>That sweet little flush came onto his face again, burning in his cheeks, and he gave Aimé a smile before he walked up the cabin, and Aimé watched his arse as he walked away, squeezed into tight trousers, and his waistcoat was cinched tight, so that it was ruched up and let people see what was underneath. Aimé expected that was on purpose – but even with male stewards, Aimé supposed they wanted to look pretty.</p><p>It was nice, to have a pretty guy like that talk to him, flirt with him, laugh at his jokes.</p><p>He wasn’t like Jean-Pierre. Even when they’d met, Jean-Pierre had led Aimé where he wanted him to go, and Aimé had gone along with it – this guy was shy, let Aimé take the lead. Maybe he was insecure about something, had low self-esteem, or something like that.</p><p>Maybe he just liked ugly guys.</p><p>Aimé thought about it. He really, really did. He wondered what the steward would be like in bed, if he’d be as quiet and shy was he was now, or if he’d be loud and demanding; he wondered how he’d like it, face to face or from behind; he wondered where the most sensitive parts of his skin were, which would make him really writhe.</p><p>He avoided La Ferme, when the plane landed.</p><p>He got a taxi into Grenoble proper, carried his suitcase alongside him, and walked into a rundown little wine bar, the first one he saw that was licensed to open ‘til dawn, and stepped inside, past a group of old men chattering over a plate of cheese, past a couple on a date, and sank into a little table for two.</p><p>“Wine list,” said the waitress, who was chewing gum and stared somewhere into the middle distance rather than at Aimé’s face, setting it and the menu down on the table in front of him, next to a carafe and the glass. “Menu. Water, glass. You need another?”</p><p>“No, thanks,” Aimé said. “Leave me a few minutes, would you?”</p><p>“Got it,” she said, unfeeling, and stepped away.</p><p>He loved French customer service.</p><p>He took a few minutes, shifting in his seat: he dragged the strap of his satchel over his shoulder, sitting it down neatly on top of his suitcase, and then he rolled his shoulders, leaning back in his seat a second.</p><p>He thought of the steward with the fat arse, flirting with the ugly passenger on his flight, and he smiled to himself, pouring himself a glass from the jug and taking a sip, drumming his fingers on the table.</p><p>He felt strangely, inordinately calm.</p><p>He had been since he left.</p><p>He didn’t know what was wrong with him, really – he supposed he should be freaking out, screaming, whatever else. He wondered if that was what Jean-Pierre would be doing, once he woke up – was he awake already? It was impossible to say.</p><p>It wasn’t as though Jean-Pierre could call him. His father couldn’t call him, either – Aimé was completely free, no strings attached, had enough money to put himself down for a few weeks, get his head in order.</p><p>And then…</p><p>And then what?</p><p>He thought about Jean-Pierre killing him. He thought about Jean-Pierre getting carried away, sitting in Aimé’s lap with his hands around Aimé’s throat, or Jean-Pierre smoothly sliding a straight razor over his skin; he thought about Jean-Pierre suddenly losing his temper and snapping Aimé’s neck. It was hot, still, even though he didn’t want to fucking die that way, but maybe that was the problem, that it was hot.</p><p>And where was the guarantee, with Jean-Pierre, that he <em>wouldn’t</em> kill Aimé?</p><p>He’d killed King Rupert without meaning to, he’d said – hadn’t even thought about it, had just blanked out and done it, as if that was supposed to be fucking comforting, as if it’d be okay for Jean-Pierre to kill Aimé, so long as he didn’t <em>mean</em> it…</p><p>And for all that, here Aimé was, fucking aching with guilt at having left Jean-Pierre behind, feeling bad about it, and even feeling bad aside, he wanted to go home anyway – and that was telling, wasn’t it? That he wanted to go <em>home</em>?</p><p>Home was Jean, whether he liked it or not, even though they’d barely known each other for more than four months: home was Jean-Pierre’s frankincense scent and Colm making him work out in the yard, it was the long couch and the fireplace, and getting woken up by the O’Malleys’ huge, ginger cat when he came visiting.</p><p>“Is there anyone sitting here?” asked a voice, in English, and Aimé stared up, his jaw completely dropped, as Asmodeus didn’t wait for an answer: he slid himself into the seat across from Aimé, unbuttoning the front of his cardigan and leaning back in the seat, and Aimé stared at him, uncomprehending, looking between De and the door.</p><p>“How the fuck did he call you?” Aimé asked. “You don’t have a phone.”</p><p>“A trait we have in common these days, or so I’m informed,” Asmodeus said mildly, and waved the waitress over. As Asmodeus offered a platter of cheese and meat for them, and a bottle for them to share, Aimé said absolutely nothing, assuring himself that Asmodeus was real, that the waitress could see him, was talking to him.</p><p>“You here to tell me to go back?” Aimé asked, and Asmodeus frowned at him.</p><p>“What ever gave you that idea?” Asmodeus asked, and he interlinked his fingers, leaning his chin on the top of his two hands and looking at Aimé directly. Aimé remembered when he’d first met Asmodeus, looking at him had been like looking at the sun – he’d never been able to do it directly. Then, it had just been uncomfortable. Now…</p><p>Now, he looked De in the face, and he felt a kind of sensitivity in his eyes, felt that he should look away, but didn’t, and it made him feel good.</p><p>“My brother is like a cat, Aimé,” Asmodeus said in his slow, deliberate voice, so deep, so smooth, a voice he’d never forget in his life. “I love him very dearly, but he comes and goes as he pleases, he fucks all the neighbourhood toms, and he kills every creature he finds smaller and weaker than he. He is a devastation. I love him, but it’s true.”</p><p>Aimé swallowed.</p><p>“I’m not here to tell you to go back to him, especially if you don’t want to,” Asmodeus murmured. “I’m here because I thought you might like an educated party with whom to talk out your troubles.”</p><p>Aimé tapped his fingers against the cheap table between them. “Has he killed other boyfriends?”</p><p>“Other than Rupert? No, never. Manolis was shot, Benoit had a stroke, Bui died of tuberculosis, Farhad, as you know, died after complications from his HIV – pneumonia, I think. Jules died in his sleep, of a heart attack, or something like that.” Asmodeus spoke very casually, simply, with an easy gesture of one hand as he spoke. “But if Jean has proven too much for you, Aimé, I think you should leave him.”</p><p>“I don’t want to,” Aimé whispered. “Not permanently. I l… I want him. I’ve never wanted anybody like I want him.”</p><p>“Will you still want him,” Asmodeus asked, “if he kills you?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aimé said. “Maybe. Do you think he will?”</p><p>Asmodeus studied him a moment, seemingly fascinated, and then asked, “You’re frightened he’ll kill you?”</p><p>“Shouldn’t I be?”</p><p>“I don’t think he’d kill you,” Asmodeus murmured. “Even provoked, even if you asked him to, I don’t think he would.”</p><p>“Did you think he’d kill Rupert?”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” Asmodeus said. “I was honestly surprised it took him so long.”</p><p>“Oh,” Aimé said.</p><p>Asmodeus inhaled and then exhaled, slowly, thoughtfully. “I blame myself, in part, for the damage done to Jean by Myrddin. I told you before, Aimé, as much as I would very much like to be, I’m not omniscient. As soon as I realised Jean-Pierre had stopped showing up to his work at the time, I started my search for him. I combed the world over. I even spoke with Myrddin – he had ensured almost none of his staff were aware, that none of them could tell me.</p><p>“I very nearly killed him. I wanted to. But what you must understand, Aimé, is that my actions are not my actions alone: everything I do can affect the Embassy, affect angels as a whole.”</p><p>Asmodeus leaned back, murmuring thanks as the waitress set a platter of cheeses, crackers, and cured meats in front of them, and set two glasses beside each of them, also placing the bottle ready for them. As Asmodeus drew the cork from the top of the bottle, he went on, “Jean was… difficult, after that. Brittle. He refused to speak to Colm for nearly a decade, because in his mind, Colm had abandoned him, and didn’t care that he might be imprisoned. He couldn’t be left alone in a building, in a room, even – he was terrified of locks, couldn’t stand a closed door. When he met Rupert, he was working as a lawyer – that business of using his royal blood, that was brought up within a year. It surprised me that Jean-Pierre didn’t snap until after he was crowned, but I think that was the final trigger, so to speak.”</p><p>“Why didn’t Colm look for him?” Aimé asked in a low voice.</p><p>“He was busy,” Asmodeus said. “There was a war on. And Colm had infiltrated a Nazi family in 1940, killed them in ’41 – and they had a little girl, Heidemarie, who was four. So Colm adopted her. Raised her as his own.”</p><p>Aimé was silent for a long second. He tried to take in a few of those data points, one after the next: Nazi family, killed them, adopted their daughter, didn’t break Jean out of prison.</p><p>“Fuck,” said Aimé.</p><p>“Yes,” Asmodeus said. “She was a wonderful little girl. Bubbly, energetic – extraordinarily skilled with darts and throwing knives. She used to threaten to run away and join the circus, and Colm always said he had to take this very seriously, because any circus would eagerly snap her up.” Asmodeus smiled slightly, spreading some soft cheese on a cracker, and then said, “But Jean took it very personally, you understand, that Colm chose to look after a human little girl instead of looking for him. Heidemarie is eighty-something now, and Jean-Pierre has never said a word to her. He holds his grudges, Aimé.”</p><p>“You think I should break up with him?”</p><p>“I think you should do what you want to do.”</p><p>“Colm thought I should break up with him.”</p><p>“I’m sure he does think that,” Asmodeus said. “Colm loves Jean very dearly, but he is more aware than anybody of his flaws. More forgiving of them, too, I think.”</p><p>“More forgiving than you?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Perhaps not,” said De.</p><p>“Why are you here?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Well,” Asmodeus said, hesitating a moment, and then said, “There’s a wine-tasting tomorrow, starts at eleven. I thought you might like to go.”</p><p>Aimé blinked. “A wine… A wine-tasting?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“What the fuck does that have to do with Jean?”</p><p>“Well, nothing,” Asmodeus said. “He doesn’t drink wine – even if he did, he wouldn’t be invited. I’m asking you.”</p><p>“Me?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“You’re inviting me to a wine-tasting?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“So you think I should break up with your brother?”</p><p>“I think that’s your decision.”</p><p>Aimé pressed his hand against his mouth for a moment, trying to take that in, and he looked at Asmodeus’ simple, casual smile, at his cold eyes, trying his best to make sense of him.</p><p>“Do you—” Aimé started, and then closed his mouth.</p><p>“Do I…?”</p><p>“Do you want to fuck me?” Aimé asked.  </p><p>Asmodeus blinked. He looked surprised, genuinely, really surprised, and he considered the question very seriously as though Aimé had asked him some kind of maths question, something difficult. “Well,” he said, “No. I had the wine-tasting in mind. Were you hoping I would?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t complain,” Aimé said slowly. “But I don’t think Jean would like it.”</p><p>“Good, glad that’s sorted out,” Asmodeus said. “You’ll come to the tasting, then?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “Yeah, okay. I just… Isn’t that weird? If I leave Jean for real, actually leave him, you’d, what, still hang out with me?”</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I? No one else I know appreciates wine the way you do.”</p><p>“Well, because I’d be your crazy brother’s weird ex.”</p><p>“I try not to let Jean have veto power over my social calendar,” said Asmodeus, giving a light shrug of his shoulders. “And nor does Colm, for that matter. You understand that, don’t you? That Colm and I wouldn’t cut all ties simply because Jean did?”</p><p>“He’s going to kill me,” Aimé said.</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“For leaving him.”</p><p>“Oh,” Asmodeus said, and thought about it very seriously. “He might try,” he decided, with a small nod of his head. “Best to let him calm down.”</p><p>“I’m not saying I’m gonna go back,” Aimé said. “He’s— He’s so beautiful, De, he’s gorgeous, he’s perfect, but he’s like… He’s like a fucking black hole. I think maybe he’s safest from a distance.”</p><p>“I expect you’re right,” Asmodeus said, and looked at Aimé amusedly, his lips quirked into a small smirk. “And now you’ve been so close, Aimé, do you think you can keep your distance?”</p><p>Aimé swallowed. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “I used to want to die, and I don’t want to anymore, and I don’t want to go back to Jean just to fucking kill myself with him.”</p><p>“Sounds like quite the conundrum,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“You’re not helping.”</p><p>“I know, I’m not trying to.”</p><p>Aimé laughed. It was a funny laugh, a strange relief, one that ached as it wrenched its way out of his chest, and he leaned back in his seat, trying to gather all the shattered parts of himself into a person again.</p><p>“Why not try the wine?” Asmodeus suggested. “It’s a very pleasant Malbec.”</p><p>“Would you go back to him?” Aimé asked. “If you were me?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Asmodeus said. “But I am me, Aimé. And I go back to him as often as I can.”</p><p>Aimé picked up his wineglass, and Asmodeus smiled at him approvingly.</p><p>Their glasses clinked in a silent toast.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. The Eye Of The Storm</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre shifted slightly, in that strange point between wakefulness and further sleep, and then he realised that he was asleep, and suddenly jolted upright with a sudden start. Breathing heavily for a moment, he felt himself shiver, for it was cold in his room, and in the darkness, he slid his hands over the bed, reaching for Aimé.</p><p>Aimé was not beside him, and where Jean-Pierre’s palms slid over his place on the bedspread and his pillow, he found that they were cool under his hands.</p><p>It was barely light outside, the scarcest sunlight eking in through the night’s darkness, and Jean-Pierre shifted himself forward on the bed, tugging his blanket around himself and stumbling out of the room, down the stairs.</p><p>“Aimé?” he called, flicking on the light in the living room, expecting to see Aimé laid out on the sofa, his laptop in front of him, but there was no sign of him, and looking into the garden yielded no appearance of him either. “Aimé!” he called again, this time up the stairs, and he moved back up them, pushing open the door to the bathroom, seeing the bath dry and empty; he looked into Asmodeus’ room, found it as untouched as it had been since Asmodeus had left, with strange gaps on the shelves where he had taken books and clothes with him.</p><p>A sort of cold, pitted dread was beginning to form in his chest as he stumbled up the stairs to Colm’s room, and pushed the door open there.</p><p>Standing on Colm’s bedroom threshold, he stared as the mess of Colm’s room – his bed, a single with a few patchwork quilts layered over top of it, and the clothes strewn over the floor and piled in Colm’s laundry basket, because he always let them pile up for the longest time before he actually did his laundry. Colm had no books, and no television, either: there was a complicated tank to one side of the room, which he had been growing mushrooms in, and on the shelves were scattered bits and pieces – whittling projects, seed packets and equipment, photo albums. On several steel shelves, which dominated the main part of the room, he had a great many drawers and toolboxes, which were filled with electrical components, screws and nuts and bolts, and tools for any manner of task.</p><p>Over his bed, there were a great many framed photographs – photos of Colm standing with other crew members on a US navy vessel, of him laughing with other railway men, of him with De, of him with Benedictine and Jean, and many photos of himself and Heidemarie.</p><p>Aimé wasn’t in here, either.</p><p>He knew that he was losing control of himself even as it began to happen: he was at the very top of a hill, ready to begin rolling, and try as he might to drag himself back from the edge, from the inevitable, thundering fall, he could not stop his mind from working over the facts as he had them.</p><p>Aimé had brought him home last night. Aimé had found out about Rupert; he had found out about Rupert, and he had brought Jean home, and he had held him while he cried, and then…</p><p>He had left.</p><p>Aimé’s bike was gone.</p><p>The betrayal felt so huge, so unfathomably wide and heavy and impossible, and he knew that he should call Colm, he <em>knew</em>—</p><p>And then the betrayal cracked like eggshell, and out of it burst rage.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>When he woke up again, his head was pounding from the sedatives and his mouth was dry and he didn’t want to be alone and he jumped, but Colm caught him by the back of his shoulders and wrapped his arms around Jean-Pierre to keep him from struggling away.</p><p>“Hey, hey, hey,” Colm said lowly, his voice pitched low, his hands pressing down hard on the sensitive muscle of Jean-Pierre’s upper back and making him go limp and easy, falling against his brother’s chest. “I got you, Jean, I have you, c’mere,” Colm wrapped one arm tight around Jean’s lower back, and although Jean let out a whimpered sound as he drew one arm away, he was only reaching for a bottle of water, which he brought up to Jean-Pierre’s mouth.</p><p>Jean drank.</p><p>Once Colm had decided he’d had enough, Colm stroked one hand through Jean-Pierre’s hair, and Jean shivered.</p><p>He couldn’t really think, just yet.</p><p>He was always slow to come to, after an episode like this one, couldn’t really rebuild himself into something that could think, could feel: all that was left to him was numbness and blankness, and his hands fisted tight in the front of Colm’s shirt.</p><p>“How many you take?” Colm asked. As he asked, he stroked one finger gently over the place where Jean-Pierre’s sleeve had ripped, touching the blood that had stained his arm when he’d cut himself on the sofa spring, but the wound had healed quickly, and it didn’t hurt whatsoever.</p><p>“Three.”</p><p>“Thought you seemed slower to come around than usual,” Colm murmured.</p><p>“I needed them,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “I was… too much, I know I was too much, but he, but I—” It was all fragmented, not yet returning to him, and the bits he could remember came in small pieces of black and white recollection, lacking colour or full feeling.</p><p>“I know,” Colm said gently, and he was stroking lines on Jean-Pierre’s back now, up and down, up and down. It was meditative, dizzying, soothed the barely finished thoughts Jean had of clambering out of bed and getting free. “You didn’t do too much damage, don’t worry. Nothing I can’t fix. You took them as soon as you could?”</p><p>“When I remembered,” Jean-Pierre said, his own voice sounding distant in his ears. “When I cut myself.”</p><p>The rage, white-hot and blinding, was a distant memory to him now – he remembered screaming, and he could feel that he had been screaming, too, because his voice was hoarse and brittle and it hurt to speak, even to swallow, and he remembered tearing, throwing, ripping, trying to do anything that would make him stop <em>feeling</em> everything, so overwhelmed only violent instinct was left to him.</p><p>He remembered the sudden, bitter clarity that had come when the spring had cut into his arm, and he had scrambled up the stairs while the clarity lasted through the mist of his own pain, had grabbed his cannister of pills from his medicine cabinet and popped two.</p><p>The melancholy, thick and wet enough he could drown in it, had come after that, and he had gathered a nest to himself where he could smell comfort when the sedatives had made his fingers too clumsy and too slow and his brain too foggy to dial Colm on the phone.</p><p>When he had thought the melancholy was due to tip into rage again, he had taken a third pill.</p><p>The first time a rage like that had overtaken him, it had been in the early 1800s, and he had failed to cure a little boy of a bad injury – had he been quicker, had he not been fast asleep when the call had come, he could have saved him. It had been his fault entirely, and that had been a heavy cross to bear, until he’d snapped with it.</p><p>Asmodeus had taken him into the middle of nowhere where he could scream himself hoarse, but it had been Colm who had drugged him with morphine, the second time it had happened.</p><p>Things were easier, now.</p><p>Jean still hated morphine.</p><p>“It’s good that you remembered,” Colm murmured softly, stroking the back of his neck, pressing on the muscle there and making Jean-Pierre melt into jelly in his lap, the horrors of the world fading away and leaving only Colm’s hands behind. “Not so pleased you had to hurt yourself to remember, but that you remembered at all is good. Half the time I come home and have to push them down your throat.”</p><p>“I wanted to call you,” Jean-Pierre mumbled. “Couldn’t work the phone.”</p><p>“Peadar was trying to get in,” Colm said. “Must have been able to hear you screaming, or tell you were upset, anyway – he wanted to get to you.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jean-Pierre whispered, and entirely without meaning to, he started to cry.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Colm said, his voice still pitched low as he sat up, gathering Jean-Pierre more completely to his chest, stroking his hands up and down Jean-Pierre’s back still, “that cat loves you, that’s all.”</p><p>“Aimé left,” Jean-Pierre whispered into Colm’s neck.</p><p>“Looks like it,” Colm murmured. His tone was not unsympathetic, and he restrained himself from saying anything catty on the back of it. For some reason, the knowledge that Colm was likely holding his tongue to spare Jean-Pierre’s feelings was worse than Colm having said something cruel at all, and Jean-Pierre began to sob in earnest.</p><p>The sobs tore from the very base of his throat, ragged, pathetic sounds that he knew should have embarrassed him, but he wasn’t quite pulled together enough to feel anything nearly that complex at all: instead, he was taken away with the profundity of his grief, and he could only hold on the tighter to Colm as the tears soaked hot on his cheeks.</p><p>Colm didn’t say that he was sorry, and nor did he assure Jean-Pierre that Aimé would come back, because he wouldn’t have meant the former, and no doubt he was hoping against the latter: instead, he said softly, sweetly, “I have you, Jean, I’m not going anywhere,” and held him until Jean fell asleep again.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>When Jean-Pierre woke again, he was overheated with Colm’s arms on him, and he shifted uneasily in his brother’s grip, leaning back and away from him. His stomach growled with hunger, so empty it was making him feel sick, and overtiredness had wrought in him a dull, thudding headache.</p><p>“You remember what happened?” Colm asked quietly: his tone was simple, straightforward, not cold but not unnecessarily sweet, either, and Jean-Pierre inhaled, feeling his hands twitch at his sides, but he prevented them from clenching into fists.</p><p>The rage was there, that much was true, but it wasn’t the hot, incandescent thing it had been when the bubble had burst earlier that day – it was colder, turned hard and steely where before, it had been molten.</p><p>“We went to museum off the witches’ market, that awful art place,” Jean-Pierre said quietly, aware of how wooden his voice sounded, how cold and brittle. His eyes hurt, felt dry and bruised from all his crying, and when he touched his cheeks, he could feel where the skin was still slightly sticky with dried tears. “They have an exhibit not yet open about angels – <em>L’ange du mort</em>, the Schafer painting, is on display there.”</p><p>Colm’s expression didn’t change. He was sitting awkwardly on the bed to accommodate the fact that Jean-Pierre was sitting between his legs, because even though he hadn’t wanted Colm’s arms wrapped around him any longer, he didn’t know that he could stand, immediately, not to be touched at all.</p><p>Colm’s lips were loosely pursed together, and he looked at Jean-Pierre attentively, revealing no particular emotion.</p><p>“You knew he’d find out eventually,” he said finally. “About Rupert.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre inhaled very slowly, gritting his teeth a moment. “Yes,” he said. “But he brought me home. I was upset – he comforted me. He asked me… He asked me questions.”</p><p>Was that when Aimé had decided he would leave?</p><p>Then, or before? Or had it been once Jean-Pierre had fallen asleep?</p><p>What was it, precisely? That Jean-Pierre was cracked, broken, a beautiful thing in a state of disrepair? That he had killed? That he would kill again? That he had killed a man he had loved – that he hadn’t meant to, at the time? That he would do the same again?</p><p>All of the above?</p><p>His hands were trembling, he realised, in a distant sort of way. His skin felt full of broken glass.</p><p>“Don’t tell me you’re surprised,” Colm said.</p><p>“Why should I be? You wanted him to leave me,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Jean—”</p><p>“You told him to, in so many words,” Jean-Pierre cut through before Colm could go on. “Why else would you tell him about Myrddin? A very funny thing to tell him, too, the one part of the matter that <em>wasn’t</em> my fault, where you left me to <em>rot</em> in a jail cell, didn’t even <em>bother</em> to find me—”</p><p>“Wasn’t your fault?” Colm repeated sharply. “Uh uh, Jean, you don’t get to pull that fucking card on me – I don’t know what you and Myrddin had going on <em>before</em> that shitty assassination attempt, but you fucking knew it wouldn’t be a third time lucky, and you should have expected he wouldn’t just toss you back to the Embassy again.”</p><p>“Six years,” Jean-Pierre said. “And you didn’t even <em>look</em>.”</p><p>“I was a little fucking busy, Jean,” Colm said, leaning away from Jean-Pierre, and as much as a part of Jean cried out for the loss of contact, another part of him felt a vicious thrill at having made Colm draw away from him. “Taking care of a <em>different</em> baby.”</p><p>“Yes, the Nazi baby you picked from the arms of her dead parents,” Jean-Pierre said coolly. “More important than your own brother.”</p><p>That cut him, alright. Jean-Pierre watched the change in Colm’s face, the tightening of the muscles there, the way his jaw twitched, his lip curling ever so slightly, the way his brows tilted forward, knitted slightly toward one another.</p><p>“You know what you forget?” Colm asked. “S’that I see you like this every fucking time you fly off the handle and need to be drugged to get you down halfway to earth again, ‘cause you’re such a fucking menace.”</p><p>“I’ve never hurt a soul during an episode,” Jean-Pierre whispered, feeling as though he’d been drenched in ice water, his fingernails cutting so hard as they clenched to his palms that he near drew blood, and Colm laughed, a bitter sound.</p><p>“Not yet,” Colm said, faux-sweet, his teeth bared. “But we wouldn’t have those fucking tranqs for you if we didn’t know it might be a problem, would we?”</p><p>“I expect it’s nice for you when I take my sedatives, feeling like the intelligent one between us for once,” replied Jean. “Coming from a man so thick in the skull he can barely even make sense of his letters, let alone read a page without someone to hold his hand, I’m sure you’d like me drugged senseless more often.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre flinched when Colm moved suddenly, expecting a kick, but Colm was just swinging his legs over to get out of bed, and he moved fast from Asmodeus’ room, his feet making heavy sounds on the landing and then the stair as he went downstairs.</p><p>Almost immediately, Jean-Pierre regretted what he’d said, and the sharp sense of victory he’d felt, cutting at Colm, scabbed over into something heavy and sickly instead. Falling to the side, he dropped his cheek to the warmth of the pillow Colm had left behind him, and laid for some time in the silence he had left there too.</p><p>The sickly feeling in the pit of his stomach, hunger now mixing with anxiety and shame, bubbled into something closer to nausea, and Jean-Pierre crossed his arms as tightly as he could over his chest, squeezing his hands under his armpits and trying to ignore the crawling thickness of the regret creeping over his skin. He knew he was being cruel, and he knew, too, that biting at Colm wouldn’t bring Aimé back.</p><p>He didn’t want to think of Aimé just now.</p><p>The blinding terror that accompanied the thought of him was too much.</p><p>He felt wholly alone in the world, and although his eyes were dry, he ached to begin crying again, as abandoned as he was – and that was the essence of his life, he thought, one abandonment after another.</p><p>Abandoned by God, by the Host; abandoned by Jules and Manolis and Benoit and Bui and Colm and Asmodeus and Rupert and Farhad; abandoned by Aimé, now. And he did deserve it, didn’t he, in one way or another? He was beautiful, an image of perfection, and underneath, he was all cracked, and everyone rather hated him.</p><p>His chest ached.</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t know how long he lay in his place, staring into the middle distance and loathing everything in general, and himself in particular, before he slowly wrapped a blanket around himself and descended the stairs. Each step was a slow thud under his bare feet, and when he nervously poked his head into the living room, Colm was sitting on the sofa beside the lit fire, watching a video on his phone.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Jean-Pierre said quietly, although the word felt like poison on his tongue. “That was cruel of me, and unfounded.”</p><p>“Yep,” said Colm, not looking up from his phone.</p><p>“It is a damning of my own character, not of yours, that I have mocked your difficulty in reading.”</p><p>“It sure fucking is,” agreed Colm.</p><p>“I know I am difficult,” whispered Jean-Pierre. “I have always been very grateful, that you love me anyway. You do love me, don’t you?”</p><p>Colm inhaled, his chest expanding, and then, he sighed. It was a loud sigh, full of resignation. Still, he did not look up at Jean-Pierre, but he did speak. “Couldn’t stop if I tried, and I’ve fucking tried,” said Colm, and lifted one arm.</p><p>Jean-Pierre ran across the room, falling immediately against his brother’s side, and he buried his face against Colm’s breast, letting the other man squeeze him so tightly his bones creaked under the flesh. It was a relief, a desperate one, and Jean-Pierre dragged in a little gasp of air.</p><p>“I’m not sorry he left,” Colm murmured against the top of Jean-Pierre’s hair, “but I’m sorry you’re hurting.”</p><p>“Do you think he’ll come back?” Jean-Pierre asked in a low murmur.</p><p>“I don’t think he should.”</p><p>It hurt, though it was not unexpected, and Jean-Pierre fisted his hands in Colm’s jumper again, squeezing tightly at the fabric and feeling its texture under his fingers. “I wouldn’t kill him,” Jean-Pierre said. “I wouldn’t.”</p><p>“Doesn’t mean he should come back.”</p><p>“Do you think he will?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Colm said lowly. “But if you really loved him, you wouldn’t fucking want him to.”</p><p>“Why don’t you leave?” Jean-Pierre asked in the smallest of voices, muffled against Colm’s chest. “If you find me so dreadful?”</p><p>“Can’t,” Colm said. “Couldn’t stand to.”</p><p>“Would you? If you could?”</p><p>“No,” Colm whispered. His thumb tapped the phone screen, pausing the video he’d been feigning to watch. “No, I wouldn’t. Not ever.”</p><p>“Because you love me?”</p><p>“Because I love you.” Colm wrapped one hand in Jean-Pierre’s hair and squeezed it very slightly, pulling hard on his scalp – the pain was grounding, and not unpleasant – and delivered a strong kiss to the crown of his head. Jean-Pierre’s lips shuddered into the tiniest of smiles, although he knew it didn’t reach his eyes. “You need to eat something, Jean. You won’t feel better ‘til you do.”</p><p>“I miss De,” he whispered, and Colm hugged him very tightly, nuzzling his nose against Jean-Pierre’s hair.</p><p>“I know,” Colm said. “Me too. But he’s not coming home, not yet. Gonna eat?”</p><p>“Okay,” Jean-Pierre whispered, and Colm left his phone with him as he got up to cut fruit. Jean-Pierre’s eyes were too dry to start crying again, so he just hugged a pillow close to his chest and stared into the fire.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>It was late in the afternoon, and Aimé and De were walking down the street together. Asmodeus walked very confidently, his chin high, his cardigan and his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and leaving his forearms bare, and he had his reading glasses hung from the inside of his shirt pocket.</p><p>Aimé, on the other hand, was a little cold – he’d pulled on a jumper from his bag, and his fleece coat on top, but it wasn’t really all that heavy, and for being the beginning of November, the wind cutting down the main street in Grenoble was surprisingly bitter.</p><p>Aimé was huddled in his coat, his hands stuffed into his pockets. Despite their difference in height, Asmodeus didn’t seem to have any difficulty keeping pace with Aimé – when they weren’t holding hands or arm-in-arm, Jean-Pierre often walked ahead of Aimé without meaning to, or kept taking two steps forward and another step back, but Asmodeus had a slow, deliberate gait, and his loping paces were slow enough that he and Aimé kept rhythm with one another.</p><p>Syncopated, almost.</p><p>The wine tasting had been nice.</p><p>It had been a lot of white wines, not the sort of thing Aimé would normally go in for – they’d all been drier than he’d typically like, and many of them had been sweeter than he’d normally go in for, but it had actually been surprisingly enjoyable, tasting wines with De, actually talking about them.</p><p>Asmodeus knew about wine.</p><p>He’d never worked on a vineyard, from what Aimé could gather, although he’d mentioned going on tours in vineyards once or twice, but he knew about the actual business – he knew how much every bottle was worth, knew how wine worked on the market, how you bought and sold it as an asset.</p><p>“Do you invest in stock?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Not usually,” Asmodeus replied. “I do have a portfolio with a sister who works at an investment firm in Chicago, and another in Singapore. When I invest funds, I typically put them toward small businesses, especially those are struggling and need the liquid for growth.”</p><p>“You’re an angel investor,” Aimé said, halfway between disgusted and finding it hilarious, and Asmodeus, smug prick, smiled his cold, close-lipped smile.</p><p>“Yes,” he said, radiating pure self-satisfaction.</p><p>Aimé’s hand twitched at his side, and tapped his fingers against his thigh. Jean-Pierre did this, when he was anxious, Aimé knew, and it didn’t give him the satisfaction he had hoped for.</p><p>He’d actually done a few years of finance before he’d tried to kill himself – it had been fucking soul destroying, but he hadn’t actually been bad at it. He could do maths in his head, he knew his way around a calculator and a spreadsheet, but more than that, he’d found it easy looking at the accounting things they’d covered, at the aspects of financial and economic theory, but it was…</p><p>It was different, actually investing in shit for real.</p><p>Let alone…</p><p>“I can ask you questions, right?”</p><p>“Always,” Asmodeus said smoothly. They had come to a stop outside of second-hand clothing store, and Asmodeus was examining a brown bomber jacket with a sheepskin lining, stroking his fingers over its cuffs, brushing his knuckles over the fabric on the inside of its back.</p><p>“And if I wanted to ask you— For, for help, you’d do that too?”</p><p>“You want a loan?”</p><p>“Would you give me one?”</p><p>“Of course,” Asmodeus said. “But I have a feeling it isn’t money you want.”</p><p>“I don’t know how to make a business plan,” Aimé said. “If I… If I was going to make a business plan. I mean, I know my audience, but I don’t know if my rates are good, for what I do, and I’m pretty sure my invoices are fine, when I, when I give people invoices, but…”</p><p>Asmodeus didn’t seem to be paying attention. He had drawn the bomber jacket off of the hanger, and was examining it more closely, reading one of the inside labels. Aimé pressed his lips together.</p><p>“You know, I think that’s too small for you,” Aimé said. “Unless that chest is collapsible.”</p><p>“It’s not for me,” Asmodeus said, and held the coat up to Aimé’s breast. “Looks good. Come.”</p><p>Speechless, Aimé followed Asmodeus into the store.</p><p>“You don’t have to buy me a coat—”</p><p>“Are you cold?”</p><p>“De—”</p><p>“I can help you make a business plan when I’m back at Christmas,” Asmodeus said as he passed the coat to the old man behind the desk, reaching into a wallet Aimé was fairly certain was older than the Eiffel Tower and plucking a note out of it that looked so crisp and clean it could have just been ironed. “Much of your equipment is already paid for – are you planning to stay in your father’s apartment?”</p><p>“No,” Aimé said, biting his lip. “No, I don’t think so.”</p><p>“We’ll look into studio space for you, then,” Asmodeus murmured, murmuring thanks in fluent French – unlike Jean and Colm, he didn’t carry his accent speaking English into other languages, although his accent wasn’t Parisian.</p><p>“Do you speak French with a Belgian fucking accent?”</p><p>“Put the coat on, Aimé,” Asmodeus said, depositing the coat into his hands, and Aimé smoothed his fingers over the worn, comfortable leather.</p><p>“You’re so fucking unbearable,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Spoken like one of the family,” said De, smiling down at him, and patted his cheek. It made Aimé blush, furiously, embarrassingly, and he turned around so that Asmodeus couldn’t see the way his cheeks were reddening as he dragged off his raincoat and pulled the jacket on instead.</p><p>It fit him like a glove, lighter than he’d expected, and he swore under his breath as he zipped it up, huddling in it for a second and marvelling at the <em>heat</em> in it.</p><p>“This is too cool for me,” Aimé said. “I don’t wear clothes like this.”</p><p>“You’ll hardly have it for long,” Asmodeus said smoothly. “Jean will have it from you in a heartbeat – if you decide to go back, of course.”</p><p>Aimé had already been smiling at the mere thought of Jean-Pierre sneaking the coat off of the hook and wrapping himself in it, or just as likely, trying to cram himself into it while Aimé was still wearing it, and the smile froze on his face as Asmodeus finished his sentence.</p><p>He looked at Asmodeus’ face, at his smug, amused smile.</p><p>“Unbearable,” he repeated, and Asmodeus folded Aimé’s raincoat neatly into what should have been an impossible square, sliding it into his satchel. “You look like an Egyptology professor from 1834.”</p><p>“Nonsense,” Asmodeus said. “They’d never have let a man who looked Egyptian study Egyptian history.”</p><p>Aimé jumped on that quicker than he meant to: “So you’re Egyptian?”</p><p>Asmodeus looked thoughtful. “I’ve had Egyptian passports.”</p><p>“What year?”</p><p>“Oh, we weren’t counting years back then,” said De, and Aimé laughed despite himself, putting his face in his hands as he stepped out into the street. “Come to think of it, our concept of Egypt was a little different, as well.”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, I get it, you’re as old as time, and you choose to sound fucking Belgian. You’re cracked in the head is what you are.”</p><p>Asmodeus’ laugh was low and smooth and so resonant that Aimé felt it in his ribcage, even through the leather of the coat, and it made him shiver. He wondered, couldn’t help but wonder, if Jean-Pierre would laugh at this too.</p><p>“What’s he doing right now? Jean?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“If you want to know, there’s one way to find out,” Asmodeus said. It was a challenge, simply posed, and the two of them stopped on the street together, both of them still.</p><p>Aimé bit the inside of his lip.</p><p>“Or,” Asmodeus said, “we could go to the ballet.”</p><p>“The ballet?” Aimé repeated sceptically.</p><p>“You’ve never been?”</p><p>“You think I’m rich enough to go to the ballet?”</p><p>“More than.”</p><p>“You think I hate myself enough to go to the ballet?”</p><p>Asmodeus gave him a look somewhere between disapproval and affection, a look that shouldn’t have been the same between his face and Jean-Pierre’s, with how different they were, and yet was startlingly similar nonetheless.</p><p>“There’s a beautiful <em>Ondine</em>,” said Asmodeus. “I know the school very well.”</p><p>“Can I get drunk during?”</p><p>“After,” Asmodeus said, patting his shoulder, and the two of them started to walk together.</p><p>“Is he losing it?” Aimé asked. “Am I… I’m hurting him. ‘Cause I left.”</p><p>“You left because you needed to,” Asmodeus said. “Will you spend your life, Aimé, letting Jean-Pierre cut you because you don’t want him to cut himself?”</p><p>“It’s what you and Colm do, isn’t it?” What Colm did, anyway, Aimé thought – he’d definitely seen Jean-Pierre snap at Colm for no reason at all, but he’d never tried to kill him, not that Aimé knew. But… “But it’s different, I guess.”</p><p>“Not so different. We chose Jean-Pierre,” Asmodeus said. “We love him very dearly. We’ve just loved him for longer, that’s all.”</p><p>Aimé squeezed his hands inside his pockets, and then he steeled himself, looking forward.</p><p>“If this ballet kills me with boredom, you have to tell Jean.”</p><p>“I’ll shout it from the mountaintops,” promised Asmodeus, and Aimé scoffed.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>The minutes of the week passed by at an agonising pace, each grain of sand through the hourglass dragging at his skin as it went. There was no peace from the tumult of feeling that stewed inside him: there was never even the scarcest moment of calm.</p><p>When he wasn’t drowning in grief, loneliness, desperate melancholy at being left behind, unlovable, he was torn to pieces by his terror that Aimé would never come back, that he’d never see him again, and when it wasn’t fear, it was fury, and the rage would come upon him so suddenly, so painfully, so burning hot under his skin, that Colm would have to hold his hands at his sides to keep him from breaking anything apart, or doing injury to himself.</p><p>He was explosive, but that was alright.</p><p>Colm was a munitions expert, after all.</p><p>On Sunday, Jean-Pierre dropped a glass with a shaking hand, and burst immediately into sobbing, painful tears: Colm lifted up and held him tightly until Jean-Pierre was together enough to sweep up the shards, although it took time for the tears to finally dry away.</p><p>On Monday, having emailed his lecturers to advise he would not be present, he caught his finger on a splinter on one of the wood shelves in Colm’s greenhouse, and he was so abruptly angry he punched his fist through the nearest glass pane. Colm had hauled him out and away from the greenhouse, had quickly, neatly pulled the shards of glass out of his flesh even as the wounds healed.</p><p>On Tuesday, a sudden shot from outside – Mr Delaney’s battered old Ford backfiring – sent him into a sharp, wheezing panic attack, and Colm had settled him beside the fire, sitting with him until he could stop shaking.</p><p>Colm didn’t try to take the feelings from him, but only because Jean-Pierre begged him not to – he knew he wasn’t well, when he was like this, knew his own emotions dizzied him with their strength, but it was worse when Colm leeched them from him and left him suddenly numb on one side, and unbalanced in some places more than others.</p><p>“It’ll pass,” Colm kept saying. “It always does. It did for the others.”</p><p>“But that’s different,” replied Jean-Pierre. “They died. They didn’t <em>leave</em>.”</p><p>And then Colm would change the subject.</p><p>Peadar had scarcely left the house, and the kindly old creature would keep his heavy weight continuously in Jean-Pierre’s lap, would loudly purr, and even when Jean-Pierre sobbed into his fur, buried his face against the ruffed fur of his neck, he continued to rumble happily, and knead his claws into Jean-Pierre’s knees and thighs and belly, which Jean-Pierre didn’t mind at all.</p><p>On Wednesday, Colm called Pádraic over and pretended it wasn’t to babysit him, and Jean-Pierre didn’t care enough to point out that he knew aloud, so long as he wasn’t left on his own.</p><p>He knew he was being embarrassing. He knew he was being irritating, that he was being <em>clingy</em>, but he could hardly stop, couldn’t bear to be alone even for a second in case it went on longer – he shadowed Colm as he cooked or worked in the greenhouse or fixed small things at his desk; he slept in Colm’s bed or curled against him on the sofa; even Colm bathed, Jean-Pierre sat on the bathmat with Peadar in his lap, and waited for him to be finished.</p><p>When Pádraic came, and Colm left for his allotment and the church, Jean-Pierre settled at Pádraic’s feet with Peadar curled into a ginger ball on his lap, and they sat for the longest time in silence, Pádraic knitting as Jean-Pierre looked at book pages and didn’t really read them.</p><p>It was beginning to settle, he thought.</p><p>He had had times like this before, that much was true – Colm was right, that he’d survived much the same as this before, and it took time for him to even out again, to regain a sense of equilibrium, of balance, of normalcy.</p><p>It had come before – it would come again.</p><p>It was difficult to remember that, when something as little as a loose thread on his shirt made him break into tears, but the desperation of his feeling <em>would</em> fade.</p><p>On Thursday, he ran down the stairs expecting the postman, or a neighbour, and when he opened the door and laid eyes on Aimé, he felt as though the wind had been punched from his lungs.</p><p>He stared, his mouth agape, at Aimé, whose stubble had mostly grow back onto his cheeks, now, although he did not yet have the beard he had had before, and he was wearing a new coat, a jacket with a ruffed collar that rather suited him.</p><p>Aimé stood there, his hands in his pockets, and looked at him.</p><p>“Where have you been?” Jean-Pierre asked in a whisper.</p><p>“France,” said Aimé. “Grenoble.”</p><p>“Grenoble,” Jean-Pierre repeated uncomprehendingly, feeling, for just a moment, numb, and extremely calm. If his emotions were a storm, here he had found its eye, and yet the silence, the blankness of it, was far from comforting. “You were— you were in Grenoble? The whole time?”</p><p>“I needed it,” Aimé said. “Time away.”</p><p>“Away from me,” Jean-Pierre said, his own voice so loud that it hurt his ears, and the letter opener from the hall table was in his hand almost before he lunged, and he saw Aimé’s mismatched eyes widen as Jean-Pierre came for him.</p><p>The eye had burst.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Homecoming</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The sex scene is most of this chapter. Please note the undernegotiated kink and the masochism etc, and PLEASE remember to comment and let me know what you think! I'm desperate for feedback on this one.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On Sunday, after enjoying the ballet more than he would admit to, Aimé and Asmodeus spent a lot of the day in bookshops and coffee shops. Aimé picked up a few battered philosophy texts here and there, a few things that had been vaguely on his list for a while; Asmodeus looked exclusively at torrid romance novels that Aimé made fun of him for, but if it bothered Asmodeus at all, he didn’t say so.</p><p>Aimé found a book of art depicting the French revolution, and he found himself stood for a long while with the book in his hand, his fingers tracing the faces painted in the crowd, wondering if he’d find one with bright blue eyes and a cheek scar.</p><p>On Monday, they took the cable car, and Aimé couldn’t help but stay rooted to one window the whole time, not wanting to miss a second of the view as they ascended and took in the view of the whole city. The Bastille was cool, although Aimé almost found himself wishing Colm and Jean-Pierre were there too – not just because of the way Jean-Pierre would hold his hand or lean on his arm, something he found himself feeling weirdly bereft of, but because he felt like Colm and Jean would make commentary that the guides wouldn’t.</p><p>“You’ve never been a soldier?” Aimé asked De.</p><p>“Once,” said Asmodeus as they slowly descended the long, long stairway down from the mountain. He didn’t look at Aimé’s face, but kept glancing at his feet as they moved down, making sure he wasn’t tripping. “A very long time ago.”</p><p>“It bother you that Colm and Jean-Pierre are?”</p><p>Asmodeus looked at him, now, arched one eyebrow.</p><p>“They don’t have to be in an army to be soldiers,” Aimé said lowly. “To have the mentality.”</p><p>Asmodeus let out a low sound, and Aimé couldn’t tell if it was meant to be disapproving or amused. Either way, he followed it with, “No. I suppose you don’t.”</p><p>On Tuesday, they walked around a few museums – not the Musée de Grenoble, which Aimé had shaken his head at when Asmodeus had suggested it, but through an archaeological museum, and another one, a history and lifestyle museum.</p><p>Asmodeus had added in little bits he knew here and there, small anecdotes – they weren’t the sort of anecdotes Jean-Pierre would have, because Aimé was certain he’d never been skiing in his life, but they made him miss Jean-Pierre anyway, somehow.</p><p>On Wednesday, Aimé sat with Asmodeus in the room he had been renting in Grenoble’s magical quarter. It was a nice apartment over an alchemist’s shop, and when he laid on the bench seat in the window, which he did almost the whole day, he could smell the fragrant smoke that came from the potioneer’s vent – a slightly coppery smell mixed in with the chalky scent of a flower he couldn’t remember the same of, but had pink petals and blue stamens.</p><p>“He’s brewing contraceptives,” Asmodeus supplied when he watched Aimé sit up to sniff at the air, trying to figure out what it was he was smelling. “Faerie’s finger root, copper dust, and hedenia petals. There are other ingredients, of course, but that’s the bulk of them.”</p><p>Asmodeus didn’t look up from his desk as he spoke – he was doing paperwork as Aimé read his book, and Aimé laid on his side in the window to look at him. He didn’t know anything about potions, couldn’t even remember the semantic difference between a potions lab and an alchemist’s although he was aware he was supposed to.</p><p>He wondered if Jean-Pierre could brew potions like that, and his chest gave an uncomfortable pang.</p><p>“I can’t stop thinking about him,” said Aimé.</p><p>“I’ve noticed,” replied Asmodeus. “He tends to have that effect.”</p><p>“He’s crazy.”</p><p>“He’s survived a great deal of trauma,” Asmodeus said. “He has difficulty in regulating his feelings, at times – he doesn’t have the in-built stops and balances in his head a lot of people have. You’ll forgive me if I point out that you’re rather the pot calling the kettle black, if my brother’s mental health issues are so off-putting to you.”</p><p>“Mine are different,” Aimé said. “I never hurt anybody.”</p><p>“Don’t you?” asked Asmodeus.</p><p>It was amazing, how Asmodeus could make you doubt your whole fucking existence by saying two words and not looking up from his paperwork. Aimé fell back onto the window cushion, thought about all the times he’d told a guy to fuck off after asking for a second date, all the times he’d made sure to be at his shittiest when someone actually asked him to spend time with them, all the times…</p><p>“That’s not the same thing,” he said, before he could let himself spiral further into self-analysis.</p><p>“I don’t recall saying it was,” was the artfully crafted response, and Aimé swore under his breath.</p><p>“You can see the future, right?”</p><p>“Not exactly.”</p><p>“Do you rehearse all these conversations before we have them, somehow? Or are you just that fucking smooth?”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed, and he lifted his pen from the paper for a moment, leaning back in his seat and giving Aimé an indulgent smile that very nearly, almost met his eyes, which were looking at him over his glasses.</p><p>“It isn’t that I see future conversations before I have them,” said Asmodeus. “Merely that I have had so much more practice than you at having them.”</p><p>“Prick,” Aimé said.</p><p>“If you miss him,” Asmodeus said, turning back to his work. “Go home.”</p><p>“If I don’t, will you babysit me forever?”</p><p>“I’m not babysitting you,” said Asmodeus. “You are your own man, Aimé – as am I. If you wished to accompany me on my work, I couldn’t stop you, but I fear you’d find it very dull, and rather difficult. Jean would be a far easier mountain to climb.”</p><p>“And if he kills me?”</p><p>“I would say a pleasant word at your funeral.”</p><p>“Just one?”</p><p>“Two or three, perhaps.”</p><p>“Is he worth it?” Aimé asked quietly. He didn’t really care if Jean-Pierre was worth it or not, he didn’t think – he wanted to go back regardless, wanted to fall to his knees and beg Jean-Pierre to forgive him if it meant burying his face in that frankincense scent again, if it meant seeing Jean-Pierre’s pretty laugh and his haughty smiles, feeling Jean-Pierre’s hand curl through his hair.</p><p>“I’m a biased source,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“An unbiased one would tell me to run away.”</p><p>“It seems our biases bend in the same direction,” was the simple reply.</p><p>“Do you never get tired of acting like you’re the smartest guy in the room?”</p><p>“Not just yet,” De said. “But I’ll let you know if I ever want to pass on the torch.”</p><p>“It’s not that I can’t stand a week away from him,” Aimé muttered. “I just keep thinking… if this is the first week of hundreds. Could I stand that? And maybe, maybe I could, but… but I don’t want to. I don’t want to fucking die, either, but I don’t want to spend my whole life <em>not</em> with him.”</p><p>He hadn’t ever thought about a future before, not really. He’d thought in vague terms, about his paintings, about his degree, about whatever woman his father would basically force him into marrying, but he’d always kind of hoped he’d die first.</p><p>He didn’t want to die anymore, but when he thought about the future, thought about selling his paintings for real, thought about…</p><p>He wanted to go to the Musée de Grenoble. He did.</p><p>He wanted to go with Jean-Pierre beside him, Jean-Pierre leaning on his arm and listening as Aimé told him about the art, making his catty little comments about Picasso or any other artist in the room that had earned his ire.</p><p>“The first time I thought I knew what love felt like,” Asmodeus said, “I thought perhaps that I was dying. That something had gone wrong in me, in what amounted to my soul. That I should feel incomplete without another person, it seemed tantamount to a sickness.”</p><p>“You read too many shitty romance novels.”</p><p>“That’s hardly the only kind of love there is, Aimé.” Asmodeus’ tone was lightly scolding, but even as he said it, he gestured to the phone, a little black rotary thing hooked to the wall beside the door. “Book a ticket home, if you want to. Otherwise, tomorrow morning, we’re catching the train to Nice.”</p><p>Aimé looked at the phone, and blew out all the air in his lungs, felt the emptiness in his chest, held it there.</p><p>On Thursday, he went home.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Aimé had envisioned Jean-Pierre trying to kill him.</p><p>He hadn’t imagined he’d try so soon.</p><p>As the letter opener came for his face, Aimé’s hand whipped up and he shoved Jean-Pierre’s wrist to the side the same way he did when they were wrestling together – Jean-Pierre’s wrists were weak compared to Aimé’s, and he let out a sharp cry of pain as Aimé plunged the letter opener into the wall instead of his own neck.</p><p>“<em>Christ</em>, Jean,” Aimé hissed. “Would you fucking calm down a second and—”</p><p>“<em>Calm down!?</em>” Jean-Pierre demanded, his voice a loud, sharp growl, and he got a second letter opener – it must have been from the drawer, but Aimé had never seen this one before – and went for Aimé’s gut, but Aimé grabbed his hand and pressed down <em>hard</em> on the sensitive spot at Jean-Pierre’s pulse point, making Jean-Pierre shout as his hand lost grip and the blade fell to the floor.</p><p>Aimé shoved him back before he could scramble for either letter opener again, and for a second, there was nothing but a flurry of blows between them, Jean-Pierre trying to land a blow against Aimé’s face or his throat as Aimé blocked every one, taking half a step forward each time even as he felt Jean-Pierre’s fists thud almost painfully against the leather fabric of his jacket, a perfectly fine impromptu armour for when your insane angel boyfriend tried to hit you to death.</p><p>“Fuck you,” Jean-Pierre spat. Aimé had never seen him so incandescent with rage, and he tried to inform his erection – casually, so as not to make a big deal out of it – that this wasn’t the time to find it hot. “You want time away from me? I will give you time—”</p><p>Jean-Pierre managed to get his hand between Aimé’s raised arms to shove his hand against Aimé’s neck, squeezing in a choke tighter than he’d ever done before, but he didn’t protect his inside elbow, and when Aimé punched hard on the inside of the joint he almost winced in sympathy at the way it would have made the whole nerve jangle, because Jean-Pierre yelped.</p><p>“You’re not being fucking cute right now, Jean,” Aimé said. “You need to calm the fuck down and listen—”</p><p>“Why should I be calm?” Jean-Pierre demanded, rubbing his sore arm. “You <em>left</em> me!”</p><p>“Because I thought you were going to fucking kill me, which you’re not exactly proving wro— <em>No</em>.” Aimé caught Jean-Pierre by the hair as he tried to lunge for Aimé this time, and unable to stop the angel’s momentum, he shoved him over the desk table instead of letting Jean-Pierre fall into him, sending the key plate and the bills and stamps and post stuff there clattering to the ground.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was almost naked, dressed only in a jumper of Aimé’s, and Aimé kept his grip in Jean-Pierre’s hair tight as he kept him pinned over the counter, not letting him go as Jean tried to struggle free, tried to kick at him.</p><p>He didn’t know why he did it, at first.</p><p>He would love to call it pure survival instinct, but his cock was interested in far more than survival in the moment, and that was undoubtedly a contributing factor: either way, as Jean-Pierre swore profusely in French, vowed he wouldn’t stop until he had Aimé’s corpse in his arms, Aimé brought the palm of his hand down hard against Jean-Pierre’s bare arse in an open-handed slap.</p><p>Jean-Pierre reacted the way he usually did when someone spanked him – or at least, the way he usually did when Aimé did – he let out a sharp, whining moan, his hands gripping tightly at the edge of the little table, and for a second, he stopped kicking.</p><p>“Not cute,” Aimé said again, aware that he was breathing heavy. “Now, Jean, if you want to take a second and talk about this like we’re— <em>How many letter openers do you fucking have!?</em>”</p><p>Aimé snatched this one from Jean-Pierre’s hand before he could actually doing anything, throwing it behind himself in the direction of the stairwell, and this time, when he brought his hand down against Jean-Pierre again, and again, feeling the white flesh of Jean-Pierre’s lily-white arse jump under his palm, and at the moment Jean-Pierre, gasping and red in the face, managed to weakly kick out at Aimé even as Aimé turned his other cheeks red, Aimé shifted his angle and delivered a sharp smack to the open lips of Jean-Pierre’s cunt.</p><p>The sound l’ange made was indescribable, a gasping yowl of indignant pleasure, and Aimé’s palm came away wet.</p><p>“You want to kill me, sweetheart?” Aimé asked, trying to control his breathing, because he had never been much of a dom, and he was fairly certain it would undercut the small authority he was hoping for if he wheezed his way through it. “Because it doesn’t feel like you do.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre turned with a wordless snarl, and then spat in his face – although the actual spit missed – which Aimé took to mean, “No, I don’t want to kill you, spank me harder,” and Aimé did.</p><p>Jean-Pierre came apart under his hand.</p><p>He’d smacked Jean-Pierre like this before, felt the wet jump of his cunt under his palm, but he’d never done it like this, delivered one slap after the other while pinning Jean-Pierre down, and the whole time, with each popping blow against where the angel was soaked through and brightly pink, Jean-Pierre’s back arched off the table, his neck stiffening, his mouth open, his eyes screwed tightly shut.</p><p>When Aimé brought his hand down more gently, cupped Jean-Pierre’s cunt under his palm and squeezed Jean-Pierre’s clit between the thick flesh of his mons either side, rolled it hard between his thumb and forefinger the way he knew that Jean loved, Jean moaned from low in his throat, thrust weakly against the air, against the table he was thrown over.</p><p>“You left me,” Jean-Pierre said breathlessly, even as he whimpered out a little noise and spread his thighs wider.</p><p>“I was scared,” Aimé said. “I’m not scared anymore.”</p><p>“You should be,” Jean-Pierre said, and kicked Aimé’s foot out from under him.</p><p>Aimé let out a low <em>oof</em> as he lost his balance, but he managed to land on his forearm and brace himself on his side instead of landing hard on his back: it meant he was better braced to knee Jean in the solar plexus as he tried to leap on top of him, but even winded, Jean managed to twist one of his legs around Aimé’s waist and pin him as he came for him with the letter opener.</p><p>Fucking letter openers.</p><p>Aimé caught Jean-Pierre by the wrist again, but he was at the wrong angle to put any meaningful pressure on it, so he took a gamble on the worst fucking odds he’d never encountered – Jean-Pierre vowing to kill him against Asmodeus saying he “probably” wouldn’t.</p><p>“Come on then, ange,” Aimé said between heavy breaths as Jean-Pierre straddled his belly, and <em>Christ</em>, Aimé was hot, and really regretted not taking the leather jacket off, as he pulled Jean-Pierre’s little blade up to his throat, pulling it against the flesh.</p><p>He could see Jean-Pierre’s face, now, see his wide eyes, the furious downward furrow of his eyebrows, his lips curled back to show his teeth.</p><p>“Come on, baby, do it,” Aimé said, squeezing Jean-Pierre’s fist under his own. “Look at how you’ve been feeling all week, with me gone – you want to feel that forever? That’s what’ll happen if you do it. You want to miss me forever? I couldn’t miss you forever. It’s why I came back.”</p><p> He saw the shift in Jean-Pierre’s face.</p><p>When Jean-Pierre’s snarl slackened into something more shocked, it made the scar on his cheek shift too, falling down a little as his whole face shifted, and he could see now the tear stains on Jean-Pierre’s cheeks, could see how his pretty blue eyes shone with more tears.</p><p>He hoped it wasn’t the spanking that had made him cry – or, at least, that they weren’t tears in a bad way.</p><p>That guilt wasn’t exactly his priority as he took advantage of Jean-Pierre’s momentary hesitation and threw <em>this</em> letter opener away, too, threw it through the doorway into the living room, and Jean-Pierre let out a wordless cry of fury as he leapt over Aimé to try to crawl up the stairs and grab the one Aimé had tossed that way, but he saw now – not without a small hint of pride – that it was almost at the top of the flight, sticking out of the wood.</p><p>Aimé allowed himself the barest hint of a second to feel cool before he brought his elbow down between Jean-Pierre’s shoulders, where he knew the muscles were most sensitive, and Jean-Pierre screamed out a sound as he went limp on the stairs.</p><p>Aimé kept his foot on Jean-Pierre’s back, keeping him pinned there, as he shoved off his jacket and threw that into the living room, too, and tossed his sweatshirt after it. He’d dressed in comfortable clothes for the flight, and although his joggers made his hard cock a <em>little</em> too obvious, it wasn’t as if Jean-Pierre was taking too much time to look at him.</p><p>He fell on top of Jean-Pierre, and it was awkward as fuck, jarred his knee against one of the bare stairs – <em>Christ</em>, what did Colm have against carpeting? – and had to wrap one of his arms under Jean-Pierre in something too clumsy to be called a headlock to stop him from crawling away.</p><p>“You don’t want me dead,” Aimé said in Jean-Pierre’s ear. “If you wanted me dead, ange, you’d have come fucking hunting for me.”</p><p>“Perhaps I was about to,” Jean-Pierre snapped.</p><p>“Yeah? Was your pussy wet the whole time thinking about that, too?” Aimé shoved four fingers into Jean with his other hand, although the angle made his shoulder ache – and in reality, it wasn’t much of a shove, because Jean-Pierre was so sopping wet and so fucking open that Aimé felt like he could have slid his whole fist in without much trouble.</p><p>Jean-Pierre bit back a groan behind his teeth.</p><p>“You know why I left, ange?”</p><p>“Because you’re a cruel-hearted connar—”</p><p>“Because, as I said,” Aimé said, pressing his fingers down and searching for the spot that made Jean-Pierre howl, even as he dragged his teeth hard over the muscles at the back of his neck, forcing his own jumper down with his chin to keep from getting a mouthful of wool. “I thought you’d fucking kill me, and—”</p><p>“I still will!” Jean-Pierre snapped, and Aimé bit down hard enough that he tasted blood: Jean-Pierre clenched around his fingers, and for all his fucking posturing, Aimé heard the familiar whine of Jean-Pierre’s orgasm, felt the jumps and shocks underneath him as Jean-Pierre helplessly ground down against his hand. Aimé really had to concentrate to keep from thrusting his cock against the angel’s back through his joggers.</p><p>“And I came back,” Aimé went on, “because I realised it didn’t matter to me if you did. It’d be worth it.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre let out a sob of sound, pressing his forehead against the stair in front of him.</p><p>“You know why you won’t, ange?” Aimé shoved his fingers forward a little more, scissoring them as best he could and making Jean-Pierre choke on air.</p><p>“Why?” Jean-Pierre asked, in a quiet, hoarse whisper.</p><p>“’Cause I love you.”</p><p>There was no sound for a few moments except for the sound of Aimé and Jean-Pierre’s heavy breathing, the wet sound of Jean-Pierre’s hips rocking back against Aimé’s fingers, the slight creak of the stair as Jean gripped the wood so tight Aimé thought it’d crumble. Aimé realised, with a sort of sickly, sinking feeling in his belly that he’d never said that to anybody before – not to his parents, not to his nanny or any of the housekeepers, not to his grandmother, not to some other person he’d fucked, not to anybody.</p><p>He was wondering if he should regret it just as Jean-Pierre managed to viciously stab the point of his elbow against his neck, and Aimé coughed, falling back from him, closed his eyes expecting a letter opener – or, to spice things up, maybe an actual knife – against his skin, but instead of crawling out from under him Jean-Pierre twisted around to face him, and he crushed their mouths together in a kiss as he shoved Aimé’s joggers down his thighs.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>, I’ve missed this cunt,” Aimé said against Jean-Pierre’s mouth as he thrust forward, shoving Jean-Pierre up the stairs and making Jean-Pierre let out a little whimper that Aimé hoped was from his cock and not from the stair grazing his back, and wrapped his arms tightly around Aimé’s waist as Aimé twisted his hand in Jean-Pierre’s hair, shoving his head back so he could start sucking hickeys into his neck.</p><p>“Not the only part of me you missed, I hope,” Jean-Pierre managed to say between gasping little whines.</p><p>“Well,” Aimé said, dragging his teeth over Jean’s collarbone and thrilling at the way the angel arched. “It’s been a while since you sucked me off, but I guess I missed that too.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre slapped the back of his head, but he was laughing, and Aimé almost felt like he could have tears in his eyes himself, hearing that peal of laughter, even as Jean-Pierre shoved his hands up under Aimé’s shirt to dig his nails into his skin.</p><p>“I’m not gonna, ah, fuck, you’re wet, I’m not going to last very long—”</p><p>“Same as always then,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé reached between them with the hand not fisted in his hair and squeezed Jean-Pierre’s clit so tightly that Jean-Pierre wailed at the top of his lungs, the sound bouncing off the ceiling. Even when Jean-Pierre started to struggle and whimper and shake his head, he kept the grip tight: he waited until Jean-Pierre’s lips were almost bleeding from how much he was trying to bite them, waited until he saw a tear roll down Jean-Pierre’s cheek before he pulled, and Jean-Pierre’s gasp as he came again was the most sublime fucking thing Aimé had ever seen.</p><p>“You’re such a fucking masochist,” he managed to say, rolling his hips into Jean-Pierre’s twitching cunt even as he saw the ecstasy writ on l’ange’s face, the way his eyes all but rolled up into his pretty little head, his mouth wide open. Aimé fucked him harder, as hard as he could, and as much as he tried to hold himself back, he could feel himself drawing up, could feel his balls tightening.</p><p>“I want to, want to feel you come,” Jean-Pierre managed to say after he’d finished riding out the aftershocks, and Aimé moaned against Jean-Pierre’s neck as he let go.</p><p>Jean-Pierre, hot and wet and homicidal and fucking <em>perfect</em>, cupped his cheek as he came, and kissed him again.</p><p>They lay there for at least a minute or two, painting, before the adrenaline began to wear off and Aimé started feeling his new wounds – the painful bruise on the side of his throat, where Jean might as well have stabbed him with how sharp his elbow was, the bruised sensitivity of the side of his ankle, the various scuffs and grazes all over him.</p><p>“Ow,” Aimé said, and Jean-Pierre laughed, pecking him on the mouth.</p><p>“I said I would let you top,” he said sweetly, “when I thought you really wanted to.”</p><p>“Well, next time you want me to top, just try to kill me,” Aimé mumbled. “It looks like it’s a good incentive.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre giggled.</p><p>Aimé looked up at a creak on the stairs, at Colm in jeans and a t-shirt, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at the two of them disapprovingly. “Hope the neighbours enjoyed that,” he said dryly.</p><p>“Ignore him,” Jean-Pierre said when Aimé felt his stomach flip. “There is soundproofing.”</p><p>“Uh huh,” Colm said, and pointed behind them. “But only when you close the fucking door, Jean.”</p><p>Aimé and Jean turned as one, and Aimé stared at the front door, which was slightly ajar, letting in the sunlight and the cool November air, which he was only noticing now. As they both stared at the gap, the door juddered open a little more, and Peadar O’Malley padded through, squeezing his chunky body through the gap.</p><p>“Oh,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Yeah, <em>oh</em>,” Colm said. “Would you two fucking move? I’ve wanted a cup of tea for fifteen minutes.”</p><p>“You knew he was down here trying to kill me, and you just fucking stayed up there?” Aimé demanded even as he pulled himself out and off of Jean, stepping back and into the hall.</p><p>Jean-Pierre, obstinate as stone, refused to move, and Colm stepped over him, picking his way past on the stairs and reaching up to pull the letter opener out of the wall. He placed the one that he’d apparently dragged out of the stair on the hall table too.</p><p>“You seemed to have a handle on it,” Colm said dryly, and although his expression was grumpy, he slapped Aimé on the shoulder. “Besides, you knew what you were in for. You want to learn how to throw knives, let me know, but you put another one in my fucking wall, we’re gonna have a problem. Got it?”</p><p>“Got it,” Aimé said, and pushed the door closed with his shoulder as he looked to Jean, who was still sprawled back on the stairs, but Peadar was sat on the same step as his shoulder, and playfully butting his head against Jean-Pierre’s.</p><p>“Do you have to pet the cat while come’s leaking out of you?” Colm asked, disgusted.</p><p>“He doesn’t mind,” said Jean-Pierre, scratching Peadar’s ear.</p><p>“Pss pss, Peadar, tuna,” Colm said, and Peadar leapt away from Jean-Pierre, scrambling after Colm to follow him through the living room.</p><p>Aimé laughed at Jean’s pouting expression, and he slowly took a few steps forward, leaning so that Jean-Pierre could wrap his arms and legs around Aimé’s body, and started to carry him up the stairs.</p><p>“<em>Clean up that fucking mess!”</em> came Colm’s shout from kitchen.</p><p>“In a minute!” Jean-Pierre shouted back, and Aimé laughed against his neck as he carried him into his own room, dropping him back onto the bed. Jean-Pierre fell easily, but kept one leg hooked around Aimé’s waist and pulled him back as he tried to go downstairs.</p><p>“I need to pick up all your letter shit,” Aimé murmured, even as he let himself be dragged closer again. “And I think the third letter opener might be somewhere in the sofa.”</p><p>“I want to look at you,” Jean-Pierre said pleadingly, eyes wide as dinnerplates, and Aimé leaned over him, cupping Jean-Pierre’s hands where they came up to touch his cheeks. “You know me better than I thought,” he said in a soft whisper.</p><p>“You weren’t fighting as well as usual,” Aimé said. “Too angry.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre inhaled slowly, pressing his lips together, and Aimé leaned in, touching their noses to one another, even as he stroked idle, calming motions up and down Jean-Pierre’s thighs.</p><p>“I’m sorry I didn’t leave a note, or something,” Aimé said quietly. “I wasn’t really thinking critically – just. Jean, you’ve kind of made me realise I want to fucking live. I was scared you’d take that away from me a second later.”</p><p>“I struggle at times to control myself,” Jean-Pierre whispered, not meeting Aimé’s gaze. “I don’t want you dead, Aimé. I want you… mine.”</p><p>“And that’s terrifying,” Aimé said, and when Jean-Pierre gave him a glare, offended, Aimé laughed, stroked his thumb over Jean-Pierre’s chin. “That can’t fucking surprise you. You <em>know</em> you scare me, ange – you get off on it.”</p><p>“Why did you come back, then?” Jean-Pierre asked, and Aimé slid his hand between them, slid his fingers through the soaked mix of himself and Jean on Jean-Pierre’s thighs, feeling the angel shiver underneath him.</p><p>“I don’t know if you noticed, Jean, but I get off on it too,” Aimé murmured. “Don’t know what the fuck that says about me, but… it’s true.”</p><p>“How long until you can fuck me again?” Jean-Pierre asked, demanding and adorable and just a little bit frightening all at once, and Aimé laughed, pressing a kiss to his chest.</p><p>“I don’t know, sweetheart, fifteen, twenty minutes.”</p><p>“Your mouth first, then.”</p><p>“Our mess, first, and then I’ll come and eat you out ‘til my jaw falls off,” Aimé said, tugging Jean-Pierre’s hands away from his face, and Jean-Pierre bit his lip, worrying it under his teeth.</p><p>“You promise?” he asked.</p><p>“I promise,” Aimé murmured. “Is your, um— Are you okay? I feel like I hit you pretty hard.”</p><p>“Oh, no, it was good,” Jean-Pierre said, and sighed luxuriously as he fell back onto his pillows. “It was <em>wonderful</em>, actually. You should do that again. I’ll get a pump out.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, breathless, but he obediently nodded his head. He felt like his head was spinning, was somewhere between ecstatic and disbelieving, but as he pulled away, Jean-Pierre grabbed him by the wrist.</p><p>“How long?” he asked, looking at Aimé’s chest instead of at his face as he held him there, and Aimé felt his chest <em>ache</em> at the expression on his face, hesitant and a little anxious. “Will you— will you take?”</p><p>“Ten minutes, ange,” Aimé murmured. “That’s all, just ten minutes.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre let him go, and he gave Aimé a small, shy smile. It was a beautiful smile, and Aimé leaned to catch him in a kiss, to stroke  his fingers through Jean-Pierre’s hair.</p><p>“Just ten minutes,” he repeated, and pulled away.</p><p>He was back with Jean within six.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Resumed Service</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>When Jean-Pierre woke up that morning, it was not to his brother’s hoodie under his nose, Colm’s skin made shiny and slick with burns and scarring, nor to the scent of Colm himself – earth and fertiliser and gunpowder – but to Aimé.</p><p>Aimé was sprawled on his back, as he always was, and Jean-Pierre had slept the night on top of him, his cheek rested on the comfortable pillow of Aimé’s breast, touching Aimé’s thickly-haired, bare skin, and breathing in the scent of Aimé, although it lacked in its usual consistency – he smelled of books and wine, as ever, but the paint was missing from him.</p><p>“Do we have to get up?” Aimé asked, miserably, as Jean-Pierre’s alarm sounded, and Jean-Pierre laughed into his chest, reaching over and pressing the button for his alarm to stop.</p><p>“I haven’t been to my lectures this week,” Jean-Pierre said lowly, feeling a little ashamed, and he rested his chin on Aimé’s sternum, meeting Aimé’s gaze as Aimé looked down at him, reaching to stroke one of his hands over Jean’s cheek. Jean-Pierre leaned into it, encouraged Aimé to scratch lightly over the edge of his jaw. It tickled, but it wasn’t unpleasant, and Jean-Pierre sighed at the familiarity of the touch, of Aimé’s hand, of Aimé’s body beneath him.</p><p>It was a relief beyond measure, that he had come back. The fact of it hadn’t quite sunk into him, just yet, and he felt he would burst into tears with the sheer immensity of his relief, if only it would truly burst within him, and cease to feel as though it were growing ever larger in his breast, a balloon still to burst with the pressure.</p><p>Aimé had spent the week in Grenoble, he said – he had gotten the first flight he could to France, and upon landing in Grenoble, Asmodeus had been there.</p><p>Asmodeus could do things like that, from time to time – not always, Jean-Pierre knew, because as little as he knew of it, he knew Asmodeus’ sense of premonition was often vaguer than one might assume, and he didn’t believe, if Asmodeus truly anticipated everything, that Jean-Pierre would have spent more than three days beneath Camelot’s depths, those decades past.</p><p>He still remembered the blaze of fury in Asmodeus’ eyes as he had torn Jean-Pierre’s cell door from its hinges, the way he had cracked the very walls of the cellar jail so that half of it crumbled in their wake, the <em>wrath</em> that radiated from him like heat from a sun—</p><p>Of course, this was not the Asmodeus that Aimé had spent his week with.</p><p>Aimé had brought Jean-Pierre gifts, and had he proffered them immediately, perhaps Jean-Pierre might have been offended, that he should bring paltry objects to placate him, but he hadn’t remembered them out on his bike until nearly ten o’clock, and then rushed out to bring them inside: a large bag of walnuts for Jean-Pierre, and a jar of walnuts in honey, too, and a bottle of chartreuse for Colm.</p><p>It had been sweet, the way he’d awkwardly set the walnuts out on the coffee table, and then, almost shy about it, held the bottle of liqueur out for Jean-Pierre’s brother to take.</p><p>Colm had grinned, had clapped Aimé on the shoulder, and Jean-Pierre had been pleased, he had been.</p><p>He was even more pleased when Aimé had said, just before he had fallen asleep, “De wanted to go to the Musée de Grenoble, but I told him no. Couldn’t stand the thought of walking around it without you making your bitchy little comments beside me.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre had thought his heart would bloom like flowers, hearing that, and he had hidden his giddy giggle into Aimé’s neck, wrapping himself around the artist more entirely.</p><p>Now, Aimé had worked both hands into Jean-Pierre’s hair, was gently massaging his scalp on both sides, pressing his fingers against his scalp and making small, pleasant movements that made Jean-Pierre sigh.</p><p>“Hey, Jean,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Mm?”</p><p>“What are you going to get De for Christmas?”</p><p>“Ah, fuck, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre. “I don’t know.”</p><p>He was surprised, how easy it was, to return to his lectures. None of his classmates made much of a fuss, because he hadn’t truly been as involved in student culture as he ordinarily was, in his first term returning to university, and he knew that he would change that, in the new year, and although a few of his lecturers asked after his health, most of them – of course – had scarcely noticed his absence.</p><p>The days passed, one by one, and he found himself inwardly shaky, a little uncertain of himself, but every time Aimé slunk into one of his afternoon lectures and settled into the seat beside him, read his book while Jean-Pierre listened to the lecture, or met Jean-Pierre before he went to ceol night with Colm, it warmed him from the very base of himself.</p><p>Aimé himself, it seemed to Jean-Pierre, was different: he shone, now, with a different light. He walked straighter, his shoulders more squared, and while he still sauntered – Jean-Pierre believed an Aimé who did not move with some visible personality would be an Aimé no longer – he did so now with what seemed to Jean-Pierre to be a distinct confidence, and no longer with shoulders slouched, his arms drawn into himself.</p><p>He did not come to Mass, of course – again, Jean-Pierre felt that the day Aimé came willingly to Mass might be the day the world stopped spinning – but he did seem—</p><p>He seemed more interested, Jean-Pierre supposed, more invested, in Jean-Pierre’s life, and Colm’s.</p><p>On a Friday evening, Aimé accompanied Colm and Jean-Pierre to a food bank, and Aimé helped Colm as he unpacked and sorted the vegetables from his work, and then set to assisting him in packing new food crates, too. When first Aimé had come to the food bank with them, he had been nervous of interacting with anyone at all, it seemed to Jean-Pierre, and he had scarcely said a word, but now, when people greeted him by name – they knew him as the laconic extension of Colm and Jean-Pierre, if not in his own right – he looked up, and smiled his strange, lopsided smile, and greeted them in turn.</p><p>People were surprised, but not displeased.</p><p>“Starting the, hm, gifts already, are you?” asked a familiar, doddering voice to his left, and Jean-Pierre looked up to see Father O’Flaherty, giving him a small smile before looking back to his own work, neatly wrapping gifts with surgical precision.</p><p>“It is best to start these things earlier than later for the charity grotto, Father,” Jean-Pierre said pleasantly, and picked another toy from the pile to begin wrapping. “Pádraic tells me you have asked him to be Father Christmas this year.”</p><p>“We ask him every year,” said the old priest, giving a wave of one ancient, papery hand. “He’s our Gaeilgeoir Santy. Doesn’t say much, of course, but I think that only helps, hm, to sell it.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed softly, and for a moment, the two of them stood in the silence together, Jean-Pierre’s hands moving rapidly to slip each parcel into coloured wrapping paper, to tape it in three places, and then to label it in marker.</p><p>Father O’Flaherty had made no mention, since he had departed, of Father Byrne’s leaving the priesthood, except for a quick, hurried word at Mass, and the announcement that Father Holmes, an exceedingly short man with a tremendously bristly head, would be assisting the congregation in his stead.</p><p>This was not surprising, and Jean-Pierre took no offence in the silence.</p><p>“You do that very fast,” said Father O’Flaherty lowly, after it grew too much for him.</p><p>“I would hope I have a surgeon’s hands, Father,” Jean-Pierre said good-naturedly, and the old man hummed a vaguely approving noise, folding his ancient hands over his belly.</p><p>“That’s what you’ll be, then? A surgeon?”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Jean-Pierre said, with a delicate shrug of his shoulders, and then truthfully added, “I have not yet decided. I worked on ambulances in Texas – I would work in emergency services again, I think.”</p><p>He ordinarily did.</p><p>He had never lasted long, working as a general practitioner or something similar – it wasn’t that he enjoyed the constant crisis of emergency centres, because truly, things moved very fast, and often, moved so fast that he could not assist as he would like, but merely that he felt as though his mind dulled, working in slower positions of healthcare. Without the quick pace, the pressure, his work suffered, and his mind wandered – he was a better doctor, with the weight of constant demand upon his shoulders…</p><p>But then, perhaps this was why he so needed a break every few decades, and returned himself to school.</p><p>“Colm said you were a radio man, in Texas,” said Father O’Flaherty, and Jean-Pierre felt himself turn pink.</p><p>“That was some years ago, Father,” Jean-Pierre said softly, “and but a silly endeavour I pursued on Sunday evenings. A community bulletin – I would read out local events, poems and letters, play music from local bands. It was part of a small community station, that was all. A quaint thing.”</p><p>It had only been for a few years that he’d been doing it, but he had enjoyed it immensely – his slot had been between six and eight on Sunday nights, and occasionally he would assist in other parts of the station, when time had allowed him. He’d liked the rhythm of the station, liked speaking with local people, and laughing with the other hosts, many of whom had been hippies, students, and the like.</p><p>“It is not something I would replicate for myself,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I did it because I loved the people more than radio itself. You understand?”</p><p>“Hrm,” said Father O’Flaherty, furrowing his bushy eyebrows, which could have meant yes or no.</p><p>“This one ready to go into the back?” asked Aimé as he came over, pointing to a full sack of wrapped presents, and Jean-Pierre smiled.</p><p>“Father,” Jean-Pierre said sweetly, “this is my partner, Aimé. Aimé, this is Father O’Flaherty.”</p><p>The look on the priest’s face was an amusing one.</p><p>First, without taking his gaze off of Jean-Pierre, his eyes widened slightly, his lips shifting into a tighter expression, and his head tilted ever so slightly to the side as though to hear him better – next, he turned his head very slowly to Aimé, and he looked at him critically.</p><p>His watery eyes looked back to Jean-Pierre, and then back to Aimé.</p><p>In some way, Jean-Pierre supposed, one or both of them did not measure against the priest’s expected idea of a homosexual, but to the priest’s credit, he gave Aimé a smile – albeit, a slightly forced one – and slowly proffered his hand.</p><p>Before, meeting people at Jean-Pierre’s introduction, Aimé would often keep his eyes low and nod his head, mumble a word of greeting, hurriedly shake a hand and hurry away again. With Doros and Aetos, certainly, he had been somewhat more confident, but their hands had each been busy with Jean-Pierre by the time Jean made the relevant introductions.</p><p>His shoulders still back, his head up, Aimé took the priest’s hand, and met his gaze directly.</p><p>“Father O’Flaherty, I guess,” he said, clearly, with no mumble whatsoever. “Jean says you pronounce the church Latin almost correctly.”</p><p>This was so disarming, what with the way Aimé and Father O’Flaherty both laughed, although the priest did it with a sort of unpleasant glint in his eye which meant he would be filing away this slight for future reference, that Jean-Pierre felt his cheeks burn brightly pink, and shamed, he looked down at his work.</p><p>“But fond jibes, Father, I assure you,” Jean-Pierre said, and the priest chuckled, drawing his hand back.</p><p>There was approval in the way he looked at Aimé, though, even as he said, pointedly, “I never see you at Mass.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t,” Aimé said. “I don’t go.”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“I’m not religious, Father.”</p><p>“Well, that’s no good reason,” said Father O’Flaherty sternly, and as Aimé turned to pick up the bag of presents, he gave Jean-Pierre a startlingly – quite delightfully – mischievous grin.</p><p>“You have gotten me into trouble,” said Jean-Pierre in an undertone as Aimé leaned toward him. “He will not forget that Latin comment.”</p><p>“Turnabout’s fair play, I heard,” Aimé murmured against his lips, and pecked him on the mouth. Jean-Pierre laughed breathlessly, despite himself, and he couldn’t help the way he watched after Aimé as he sauntered away, his lips alive with the ghost of his lips.</p><p>“Study Latin at school, did you?” asked Father O’Flaherty once he was out of earshot, and Jean-Pierre felt his lips twist as he tried to keep from smiling, even as he returned to his work.</p><p>“Yes, Father.”</p><p>“<em>Hrm</em>,” said the priest.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>“Widen your stance,” said Colm. “We’re not boxing right now, Aimé – you keep your centre of balance in tight like that and you’re just going to make it easier to grapple you.”</p><p>“We are in the boxing ring,” Aimé pointed out, but it was with a kind of sheepish, almost-smile, and he shifted himself on his feet, spreading his knees a little farther apart and widening his stance. Colm stared at his hands for a second, and after a beat of not seeming to notice, Aimé seemed to twig, and he loosened his clenched fists.</p><p>It had been a weird few weeks.</p><p>Jean-Pierre, for the most part, had dialled himself back to his usual level of insanity – he was sometimes nasty, always spoilt, and often had a hot temper, but Colm was no longer woken every night by Jean-Pierre screaming at the top of his lungs, he hadn’t broken anything in weeks, and most miraculously of all, Colm had been permitted to spend every night alone in his own bed without Jean-Pierre crawling under the covers with him.</p><p>Colm didn’t mind sharing a bed with a brother from time to time, but when it was every night, and that brother clung to you like a limpet and cried in his sleep if you let him go, it got to be a little much.</p><p>He was better now, though – if anything, Colm actually thought he was calmer than he had been before Aimé had left. He still had his moments of panic, but Aimé seemed rosier to him, now, or more solid – more real. More of a commitment.</p><p>Aimé’s feelings toward Jean-Pierre had certainly became more solid, but not in the way they had been – Jean-Pierre wasn’t an obsession, anymore, a singular thought, but a part of the background. Aimé thought of Jean-Pierre the same way that he did his painting, his bike, his ugly beard: he was a fact of life.</p><p>At least he’d seriously considered leaving. It was more than most of them did.</p><p>It was early afternoon, and Jean-Pierre was still in lectures for another few hours: Aimé had come to the gym just as George was leaving, and he and Colm were bound to spend a while wrestling together before they showered and then drove via the university to pick Jean up.</p><p>There was a pleasant rhythm in it, Colm thought, and Aimé wasn’t quite as shy as he used to be about spending time with Colm, wasn’t as nervous about it. He’d spent his week in Grenoble with Asmodeus, and Colm imagined that had helped – Aimé had shifted his moorings, shifted his foundations, in a way, and as much as Colm wished for his own sake he hadn’t shifted them for Jean-Pierre’s sake, it wasn’t as though Jean was the only part of it.</p><p>When Aimé had come into the gym and seen George and Colm still in the pool, George struggling – as he would be struggling for a while – to breathe around his strokes rather than swallowing a mouthful of pool water every minute or so, he’d laughed a little, but it hadn’t been nasty, and he’d helped George out of the pool and passed him his towel from the bench, told him he’d get the hang of it soon.</p><p>And if Aimé was one of the family—</p><p>Well.</p><p>None of Jean-Pierre’s boyfriends had ever been that before. They’d always been separate, apart from the rest – Manolis, Jean, and Colm had spent a good deal of time together, but only because they were fighting the same battles, and the others that Colm had known, he’d never been <em>close</em> with. Spent time with from time to time, sure, even lived with, when Jean-Pierre was there, but—</p><p>This, this was different.</p><p>Aimé had just spent a week with De, just the two of them, and here he was now, in the ring with Colm, no Jean in sight. Colm liked it. He liked Aimé, he really did, no matter that he was a rich cunt with no head on him.</p><p>It was a family dinner at Pádraic and Bedelia’s tonight, and Aimé had been trying not to think about it – whenever he did, he got nervous. Colm didn’t know what it was about Pádraic that made him that way – they’d only met once or twice in passing, from what Colm knew, and given that Pádraic was silent most of the time, and Aimé was often quiet with new people, spoke only when spoken to, he was fairly certain more than two words had never passed between them.</p><p>Aimé wouldn’t dwell enough on the anxiety for Colm to skim any more out of it, and Colm knew it’d creep him out if he asked.</p><p>When Colm lunged, he feinted to the left, and Aimé didn’t fall for it, but as he pivoted the other way he tightened up his stance again to brace himself for a blow, instinct tugging his forearms up to guard his front. That made it more than easy for Colm to wrap his arms around him and slam him to the ground.</p><p>Aimé landed on the meat of his shoulders and twisted up in a jack knife, kneeing Colm somewhere in the back vicinity of his kidneys and making him grunt before he caught Colm in a headlock and rolled them over, but it was too reliant on his elbows and Colm managed to pull free.</p><p>Aimé chopped Colm in the side of the throat, open-handed enough that it couldn’t be called a punch, but Colm already had his legs wrapped around Aimé’s, pinning them under his, and before Aimé could move again Colm slammed him down on his back, both forearms braced against Aimé’s throat so that Aimé couldn’t struggle free.</p><p>Breathing heavy, Aimé stared up at him for a second, and then dropped his head back onto the mat.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>,” he hissed.</p><p>“Better than before,” Colm said, leaning back and releasing his hold on Aimé’s thighs, rolling to the side.</p><p>“I don’t fucking mean to keep doing that,” Aimé muttered, getting to his feet, and he offered his hand to Colm, pulling him up off of the ring’s floor again.</p><p>“It’s muscle memory,” Colm said, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re used to boxing: when you anticipate a blow, you tighten up and you guard yourself.”</p><p>“I didn’t with Jean when I came back from Grenoble.”</p><p>“Well, Jean wasn’t starting from five feet away from you in a boxing ring,” Colm pointed out, and Aimé huffed out an almost laugh, resting his hands on his hips and leaning back on his heels as he inhaled. “Can I ask you a question?”</p><p>“Why’d I come back?”</p><p>“No, I know why you came back,” Colm said. “’Cause you’re a fucking moron.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, leaning back against the ropes, balancing himself on his heels with his arms crossed over his chest. He was used to boxing ropes, Colm could see, knew where they gave and where they didn’t – one of the stands had been broken, but Colm had fixed that right up after the first time he and Aimé had gotten into the ring. Colm couldn’t stand broken equipment.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said lowly. “Yeah, that’s true enough.”</p><p>“What I want to know,” said Colm, “is if you thought about it.”</p><p>“Yeah, I thought about it,” Aimé said. “Thought about it the whole fucking time. What kinda question is that?”</p><p>“No, son,” Colm said. “I mean, did you actually think about it – are you okay with Jean-Pierre killing people? Killing Rupert? You okay with him killing people now? Me killing people? You okay with explosives, barricades, munitions? You okay with sticking around and maybe being put in a position where you have to join in with that some day? Or did you just think about Jean’s cunt and holding his fucking hand and decide you just <em>missed him so much</em> you just had to come back?”</p><p>For a long moment, Aimé was completely frozen, his eyes wide – albeit one eye wider than the other – as he stared at Colm, his mouth ajar as if he was about to say something in response. He closed his mouth. His brow furrowed a little.</p><p>He said, at length, “Fuck you.”</p><p>Colm laughed.</p><p>“Let’s take a break from wrestling,” he said after a second, climbing through the ropes and dropping onto the floor, dragging his satchel closer. “I said I’d teach you to throw knives, right?”</p><p>“Seriously?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Colm wondered if he should feel guilty as he pulled a set of throwing knives out of his bag. As Aimé climbed out of the ring, the only emotions that radiated from him were curiosity, interest, anticipation – it was important, Colm thought, that Aimé knew how to fight, if only so he could defend himself if something went awry, but it really didn’t seem like it had sunk in just yet, that Colm and Jean were teaching him <em>anything</em> because he <em>had</em> to know it if he wanted to stick around.</p><p>Well.</p><p>Maybe he didn’t <em>have</em> to – Bui couldn’t throw a rolled up ball of parchment, let alone a punch, and Farhad had never known a thing about it, but… Colm wasn’t stupid. He could see which way the wind was blowing on this one.</p><p>“This is Jean’s spare set,” Colm said, rolling out the leather carry case over his lap, and Aimé dropped into a crouch beside him, tugging out one of the blades by the hilt and dropping it into his palm. It must have been instinctive, the way he shifted his hand, testing the weight, but Colm watched his face, the concentration there.</p><p>“They’re heavier than I thought,” he murmured. “Stainless steel?”</p><p>“Good,” Colm said. “Yeah, that’s right. These are pretty new, Jean-Pierre got them for Christmas a few years back – they’re pretty good, a little heavy for a beginner, maybe, but you have the strength to carry it off. They have to be heavy enough that once you have force put behind them they can carry that momentum forward and actually do some damage – lighter knives you don’t need to be too strong to use, but they tend to wobble when you let them fly, and I can’t fucking stand that. Jean-Pierre can throw heavier knives, but he does prefer lighter ones – his main set are Damascus steel, an antique set De got for him, and they feel a lot lighter in the hand than they do once you throw them. Enchanted.”</p><p>“Throwing knives is more Jean-Pierre’s thing than yours, I guess?” Aimé asked, and he asked it with a sort of small smile – Colm expected to feel arousal coming off him, but instead, there was a sense of affection, a sense of solidity, satisfaction. He was learning the differences between Colm and Jean – he liked that.</p><p>Colm felt himself smile slightly, and he reached out, lightly shoving Aimé in the side of the head and making him rock on his crouching heels, huffing out a laugh.</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm said. “But I’m good enough – I taught my daughter, Heidemarie, when she was young, and she got to be a lot better than me at it, by the time she was your age.”</p><p>Aimé inhaled slowly, and then said, “Yeah, De mentioned that. That you had to stop her from joining the circus.”</p><p>Colm felt himself laugh harder now as he stood to his feet, holding the leather wallet against his chest as he moved across the room, flipping over the targets on the back wall. This room wasn’t much used, but he knew that some of the big lads played at throwing axes from time to time, and that meant they had a good, hard surface to work from, although the circular targets weren’t as good as man-shaped ones.</p><p>“Yeah, she used to threaten from time to time,” Colm said, “if she didn’t get her way, when she wanted to come with me on a job. De would babysit sometimes, but I think that was worse than the fucking circus, the things he’d teach her. You know my little girl could hustle cards by the time she was thirteen?”</p><p>Aimé grinned. “De taught her that?”</p><p>“Yeah, Asmodeus is a fucking card shark – there’s not a game he can’t beat you at. He won’t gamble himself, he’s got this thing about gambling, but if you see him playing a card game and someone else wins, it’s not because he couldn’t have if he wanted to.”</p><p>Colm drew a knife from the bag, tossing it in his hand, feeling it drop into his palm, and he squeezed on the corded hilt, feeling the rungs carved into it press into his palm. There was a slight ache in his chest, thinking of Heidemarie – he’d seen her in the new year, of course, but somehow, he still expected to come to her and see his little girl in her braids and polished shoes again, not an old woman in her own right, who had to take a little while to get out of her chair to hug him.</p><p>She could barely hold a knife or a card these days, with the arthritis.</p><p>“It, uh, it must be hard,” Aimé said in the silence, and Colm glanced at him. “You, you staying young, and her getting older.”</p><p>Colm held his surprise for a second, tilting his head slightly as he watched Aimé. It was a kind thing to say, thoughtful, compassionate – it wasn’t what he’d come to expect of Aimé.</p><p>“Yeah,” he said lowly, and then he turned to face the wall targets, gesturing for Aimé to come into line with him. “Don’t worry about getting it right the first time. You’re left-handed like Jean, right?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said, and he let Colm adjust his pose, left foot forward, shoulders back, form relaxed.</p><p>“Hold it by the blade, just like that, yeah, like you’re holding a hammer. You want a nice, clean arc. And, Aimé?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“You drop one of these on your foot, we tell Jean I wasn’t in the room and that you were practising on your own. Got it?”</p><p>Aimé turned to look at Colm, and then laughed, shaking his head as he turned back to the target. “I’ll try the fuck not to do that,” Aimé said, copied Colm’s demonstration as he threw.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“You cut yourself?” Jean-Pierre asked as he got into the car, and Aimé didn’t try to argue, just obediently put his hand back between the seats so that Jean-Pierre could loosen the bandage over his palm and tug back to the gauze so that he could examine the nick on the side of his palm.</p><p>“I tried to throw a knife right-handed,” Aimé muttered, keeping his gaze on the road as Colm swore under his breath at the winding roads on the campus. “Would you put your fucking seat belt on?”</p><p>“Colm, you borrow Aimé and return him damaged?” Jean-Pierre demanded.</p><p>“He was taking a piss and I was messing around,” Aimé said loyally, and Colm laughed under his breath even as Jean-Pierre leaned back in the middle seat, clipping his belt over his chest.</p><p>“Did you hit the target?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“With my left hand, mostly,” Aimé said. “I kept hitting the target really high, though, or getting the angle wrong so it’d slide down and hit the floor.”</p><p>“He did well,” Colm said. “Wouldn’t let him touch your good knives any time soon, though, he’d be fucking lethal with them.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Aimé said, and he looked at Jean-Pierre’s sweet smile in the rear-view mirror, the way he giggled, his hand over his mouth. A pleasant warmth settled into his chest, and it only dissipated slightly when Colm reached across to hit him in the chest. Rubbing his breast and sparing a moment to give Colm an irritated look, he looked back at Jean. “How was class?”</p><p>“Good,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “Some of my classmates are squeamish about our cadavers.”</p><p>“Well, most people are, Jean.”</p><p>“Not doctors.”</p><p>“They’re not doctors yet,” Aimé said. “Most of them are doing this for the first time. They’re not on round seven.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre grinned, leaning back in his seat and looking out the window. “What is Bedelia cooking?”</p><p>“Does it matter?” Colm asked. “You, George, and Pádraic are going to be eating a fruit platter.”</p><p>“I cannot be curious?”</p><p>“She made chapati and a…” Aimé squinted down at his phone, which was a shitty, ancient brick of a thing that Colm had gotten hold of for him when Aimé had said he wanted something without GPS, “bhindi masala, and uh, some fried cauliflower, and mushrooms, and some baked pumpkin.”</p><p>“Bhindi masala,” Colm repeated, mocking Aimé’s accent.</p><p>“Well, how the fuck would you say it?”</p><p>“Bhindi masala.”</p><p>“That’s the fucking <em>same</em>!”</p><p>Colm kept his gaze on the road, shaking his head. “No, it’s not.”</p><p>Aimé scoffed, and when Jean-Pierre tried to lean right forward between the seats to turn the radio on, Aimé slapped him on the wrist and turned it on for him.</p><p>Pádraic and Bedelia lived in a fairly large cottage a little way out from the city proper, and Aimé was vaguely aware as Colm drove that they weren’t too far off from Colm’s allotment.</p><p>It was the sort of ancient old building with a thatched roof that looked four seconds away from crumbling at any moment, and Aimé didn’t think he’d ever actually been inside one – he’d just seen them in the background while flicking past documentaries on TG4. Built of mismatched grey brick, some of them covered in moss, it had a door painted bright yellow, and white painted bricks around the thin, fragile-looking windowpanes. It had been added onto through the years, Aimé could see – the main bulk of the building was two storeys, although the thatch came all the way down and he knew that the second storey likely had a sloped ceiling, and then smaller, one-sided sections adjoined on either side, built of the same brick.</p><p>Colm parked the car on a slope beside Bedelia’s motorbike, and as they climbed out, Aimé saw that Pádraic and Bedelia’s yard, which was a wide, rectangular space walled in by the same grey brick the house had been made of, with a huge farmer’s gate and a <em>goddamn stile</em> instead of a gate, was also alive with fruit and vegetables. They didn’t have a polytunnel or a greenhouse like Colm, but Aimé recognised a metal enchanted framework that ran on one side, the sort of thing some people grew enchanted wines with, and underneath this metal cross work were cucumbers and tomatoes. Colm’s gardens always had a sort of military regiment to them, with picture-perfect rows and labels, the same as he kept the pantry and the armoury, but in Bedelia and Pádraic’s garden, all the vegetables grew over and in between each other, and even in November, the messy, lopsided rows of planting were a motley spread of different coloured leaves.</p><p>A grey path built of huge, square slabs cut through the centre of all this wonder, leading up to the house, and it was this path that Jean-Pierre walked up to keep from getting his boots muddy, gracefully climbing over the gate.</p><p>“Concrete doesn’t exactly match the rest,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Wheelchair access,” Colm explained as he pulled the boot open, and Aimé took two plates from Colm, holding them against his chest as Colm pulled a crate of dragon fruit and a few other cactus fruits Aimé didn’t know the name of out, balancing it on his hip. “He added it in when Bedelia was born and he swapped jobs. You alright with them?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said, and as Colm headed up the path, Aimé pulled the boot closed for him.</p><p>Colm opened the gate for Aimé to let him through, and as Aimé walked up the path, he saw that Jean-Pierre had gotten distracted between the gate and the cottage’s door knocker: he was making loud cooing noises as he crouched in the mud, boots be damned, to let Pádraic and Bedelia’s chickens come up and nestle in his arms.</p><p>“Colm—” Jean-Pierre said as they came up the path.</p><p>“No,” Colm said loudly. “You complain about the noise and you never clean the coop.”</p><p>“What about—”</p><p>“You won’t walk it.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, trying to muffle it against his shoulder as he went ahead of Colm onto the doorstep, reaching up to ring the doorbell with his elbow, awkwardly shoving the knot in the rope so that it rang.</p><p>Bouncing off the stone-built porch’s hard walls, it was painfully loud.</p><p>“He took it from the abbey,” Colm supplied as explanation, and Aimé grunted an acknowledgement.</p><p>The door opened, and Aimé was met with the gangling figure of George, whose hair was wet around his face, and who had lipstick on his jaw. His clothes were ruffled and his lips were pink from a mix of mild bruising and the lipstick, but when he saw Colm and Aimé, his eyes widened, and he turned back to look with his jaw agape at the clock beside the stairs.</p><p>“Oh,” he said, “you’re here. Let me take those plates—”</p><p>“No, it’s okay, George,” Aimé said, leaning away from the angel to stop him from trying to take them – even before Colm had advised him in no uncertain terms not to let George hold anything fragile, he’d seen Colm drop enough plates himself – “Just point me in the right direction, and I’ll hand them off.”</p><p>“Uh, kitchen’s through here,” George said, stumbling on the rug but managing not to fall down (just) as Aimé stepped inside, and Aimé stepped through the archway, surprised at the extreme heat of the cottage once you were inside.</p><p>The cottage had high ceilings – they had to, to accommodate Pádraic at all – and the archways were tall, too, so that Pádraic didn’t have to duck his head as he went through them, Aimé expected.</p><p>“Bedelia,” Aimé greeted cheerfully.</p><p>“Hi, Aimé,” Bedelia said, leaning over the wood table that served as countertop – most of the cupboards in the little kitchen were floor-to-ceiling, and they didn’t have the built countertops most kitchens had – to kiss Aimé on the cheeks.</p><p>“You didn’t leave lipstick on me, did you?” Aimé asked as he put the apple pie and the strawberry tart Colm had baked on the table.</p><p>“No,” said Bedelia, and Aimé grinned at her, at the way her dress was creased underneath her just-put-on apron. She looked past him to the hall. “Oh <em>no</em>,” she said, and rushed past to grab George.</p><p>“<em>Leave those boots in the hall!”</em> he heard Colm bark from the hall.</p><p>“They’re not even that mud—”</p><p>“They fucking are.”</p><p>Grinning to himself, Aimé inhaled, taking in the scents that filled the kitchen and the house – from the huge, cast iron aga, which Aimé was fairly certain must have been a few centuries old, he could smell pumpkin and okra, a variety of spices, and the fresh, wheaty smell of the chapati bread.</p><p>Reaching over the table, he pulled a piece of candied orange peel out of the bowl Bedelia had set aside for the winged angels’ dessert, and chewed it as he went back to the hall.</p><p>Colm, gesticulating wildly, and Jean-Pierre, holding his boots in his hand, had sequed into Irish now, and Aimé didn’t even try to cut in as he stepped into the main room in the cottage, which had another large, wooden table and a variety of mismatched chairs pulled around it, as well as a roaring fire.</p><p>Bedelia and George must have gone upstairs, because it was just Pádraic in the room, laying plates on each setting.</p><p>He’d met Pádraic, or at least had him pointed out to him, but he’d never actually talked to the old man, and he steeled himself for a second, squeezing his hands into fists before he brought them up in front of his chest.</p><p>“Hi, Pádraic,” he said, and Pádraic glanced up at him as he moved his hands. “Can… I… help?”</p><p>Pádraic looked at him for a second, but then he smiled. In the light, which mostly came from the fire, because the lights on the ceiling were dimmed a little, his dark brown skin seemed to glow warm from underneath, like there were rubies in his cheeks, and he set down the last plate before demonstrating the sign that Aimé had apparently just fucked up, one wrist over the other, but with his hands perpendicular to the ceiling instead of parallel.</p><p><em>Help</em>, he demonstrated. When he signed next, he did it slowly, and Aimé watched him closely. <em>Soon, when we eat. Now, relax</em>. Aimé smiled, gave a slight nod of his head, and Pádraic signed, <em>Colm and Jean are fighting</em>?</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said, shrugging his shoulders and leaning his elbows on the comfortable, wing-backed armchair that had been tugged to the head of the table. “Colm’s telling Jean not to track mud into the house, but Jean’s only being a bitch because Colm won’t let him have chickens.”</p><p>Pádraic laughed, nodding his head as he went to the fire and used a cloth to pull the kettle from over the flame. He nodded his head to one of the shelves, and Aimé pulled down two mugs, bringing them over and setting them on the table so that Pádraic could pour tea.</p><p><em>What happened?</em> Pádraic asked, gesturing to Aimé’s bandaged hand.</p><p>“Uh, Colm is teaching me to throw knives,” Aimé said.</p><p>Pádraic snorted.</p><p>Although – because – none of the furniture matched, the room was impossibly comfortable.   </p><p>Around the fireplace was a thick, semi-circular rug, and Aimé could see the impressions in it where the big armchair and one of the wooden chairs had been pulled away from it to put around the table instead. Still resting beside the fire was a basket full of knitting, a few stacked up magazines, and a set of stokers in a tin holder. Beside the fire, you could see through the window into the backyard, and this one, longer and so full of trees and overgrown bushes it was like a miniature orchard, had a trampoline at the end of it.</p><p>Proudly displayed in the cabinets, Aimé saw the evidence of a man exceptionally proud of his daughter: Bedelia’s smile shone out of a dozen framed photographs in between little trophies and plaques and framed pieces of embroidery. On the shelves were various pieces of Catholic ephemera – little icons and triptychs of different saints, some of whom Aimé wasn’t sure of the name of – and framed on the walls were more photographs, although these weren’t all of Pádraic’s daughter.</p><p>Most of them were in black and white, or in sepia, but Aimé could tell they’d been carefully taken care of. Pádraic was in some of the photos, but there weren’t any of him on his own – he was always there as part of a group of people in a row, especially when they were wearing what looked to Aimé to be old-fashioned nurses’ uniforms, or of Pádraic with children, holding them on his shoulders.</p><p>Aimé grinned at one photograph of Pádraic in the seat of a horse and cart, dressed up in a Santa suit, wearing a thick, white beard and big boots and glasses, and in the cart were a dozen kids, all of them laughing. It was newer than some of the other photos – it was from the fifties or sixties, Aimé thought, or around that time, but he wasn’t any judge.</p><p>“Tea,” Pádraic rumbled in a voice like distant thunder, and Aimé turned to pick up his mug, taking a sip. It was a fresh, fragrant tea, and he tasted the familiar honeysuckle sweetness – Jean-Pierre liked to put dried flowers in his tea, too. He signed, then, <em>You practised</em>?</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said lowly, giving a nod of his head. “I, uh. I got an app on my phone. I was nervous about fucking it up, but I guess it must be annoying, for us having to translate all the time, uh, I’m not great, but I learned a little when I was younger. There were some deaf boxers on the circuit.”</p><p>Pádraic stared at him, his brow furrowing. <em>Is that common</em>?</p><p>“I don’t know about common. But there’s a few – enough that I picked up a little ISL. I always tried to learn on the side so that they wouldn’t know I knew what their coaches were saying.”</p><p>Pádraic let out a low chuckle.</p><p><em>You and Jean-Pierre</em>, he said, leaning back on his heels and towering over Aimé<em>, you are the same</em>.</p><p>“Ouch,” said Aimé. “Just hit me, why don’t you?”</p><p>Pádraic grinned, and looked to Jean-Pierre and Colm as they came into the room.</p><p>Aimé saw that Jean-Pierre was in his socks, but that at some point, Colm had obviously lost ground in the argument, because Colm was just in his socks, too.</p><p>“My condolences, Pádraic, on having so long an acquaintance with my brother,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>Pádraic patted Aimé on the shoulder with a heavy hand. <em>Help Bedelia</em>, he advised, and Aimé nodded his head, but as he went by he caught Jean-Pierre by the waist, pulling Jean chest-to-chest with him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s expression, which had been at its epitome of bratty irritation, softened, and he leaned his head in closer, their noses brushing against one another.</p><p>“Be nice,” said Aimé.</p><p>“I’m nice,” Jean-Pierre lied sweetly, and Aimé chuckled, pecking him on the lips, and then patting his arse.</p><p>As Jean-Pierre clambered into one of the wood chairs and Colm sank into another, Aimé moved across the hall and into the kitchen. Bedelia had George sitting on the kitchen table, his legs wrapped around her waist, as they kissed feverishly.</p><p>Aimé cleared his throat, and as the two of them split rapidly apart, George and a metal serving tray clattered onto the kitchen floor, but Bedelia caught the jar of candied orange peels before that could topple too.</p><p>Aimé wondered if this was how Colm felt, living with Jean and Aimé.</p><p>“Your dad told me to help,” Aimé said mildly, and Bedelia ran a hand through her hair and nodded her head rapidly, giggling a little as she rushed to pull the curry off the hob.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0031"><h2>31. New Belonging</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Colm’s bedroom was an exercise in juxtaposition.</p><p>His single bed made Aimé think of Goldilocks and the three bears – Jean-Pierre’s bed had not just one but two mattress toppers, underneath several layered duvets and a few dozen blankets that oscillated throughout the week between being layered like something out of the fucking Princess and the Pea or being gathered into a nest that Jean-Pierre curled up in the middle of; Asmodeus’ bed had a mattress so hard Aimé suspected the springs inside it were made of wood, and he didn’t have a duvet at all – he had silk sheets, and while he had a few soft blankets that Aimé half-suspected were somehow thousands of years old, they were neatly folded on a shelf in his wardrobe, and Aimé didn’t know if Asmodeus ever got cold enough to sleep under them.</p><p>Colm’s bed, in contrast to the extremes of his brothers’, was normal.</p><p>The mattress wasn’t that different to Aimé’s own, yielding but not enough that you thought it was going to swallow you, and he had one medium tog duvet, and one fleece blanket or woollen quilt that was on his bed at any one time.</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s blankets had a variety of origins, but his favourites were quilted or knitted in the 1980s – Colm’s were older and more old-fashioned, and they were made of that thick, hairy fleece that was warm but slightly scratchy on the skin.</p><p>By no means did it strike Aimé as a normal bed – if he didn’t know that Colm was several centuries old and a little bitter about the coming and going of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, his bed would be able to communicate it for him – but of the three of them, it seemed the most well-adjusted.</p><p>Because of the aforementioned scratchy blanket, Aimé was not sitting on Colm’s bed: he was sprawled on the extremely battered, impossibly comfortable low sofa bed against one of the walls, which had an extra duvet and a less scratchy blanket, as well as a few stacked pillows, for when George slept over.</p><p>Colm’s bedroom was messy, but parts of it were impeccably organised: like Colm’s vegetables and the shelves in the cellar, all of his tools and seeds were very neatly organised. Colm wasn’t as anal as Asmodeus was – Aimé had had Jean-Pierre reach over instinctively to put the spice rack back into alphabetical order because Asmodeus got upset if you put them back wrong, apparently – and he didn’t handwrite little labels on his boxes, but his offcuts and screws and shit were all sorted by size in clear, sectioned boxes.</p><p>Colm’s floor, on the other hand, had clothes scattered over it, and his bed wasn’t made but loosely strewn over with his blanket and duvet, and his end table was absolutely stuffed with receipts, which Colm apparently kept, but didn’t do anything with until Asmodeus came home and collected them and filed them all away, which was apparently the only reason Colm kept them at all.</p><p>He didn’t have ornaments and knick-knacks and keepsakes like Jean-Pierre, and he didn’t have decoration on his furniture like Asmodeus – most of his furniture matched, and Aimé got the impression that Colm had made it all himself, but it was made of plain, solid wood with no decoration. He didn’t have any books, except for a handful of stacked manuals on one shelf corner…</p><p>But he had photographs, though.</p><p>Aimé had thought Pádraic had had a lot of photographs, but they were nothing like Colm’s collection – Pádraic had had them neatly framed in loose, imprecise rows, and Colm had one section of photos like this over his bed, but several other sections of the walls had hundreds of photos pinned directly to the wall, stacked all over each other to fit as many as he could in a small space.</p><p>Aimé was looking at them, lying back on the sofa with his feet up on the other arm.</p><p>Not all of them were even photos – some of them, the oldest ones, were sketches and little painted postcards – and they didn’t seem to be in any order or grouped by time or place. He saw photos of Colm smiling with miners and sailors and railway men and fishermen and engineers and other kinds of workmen, always just as smeared with oil or wearing the same battered clothes; he saw pictures of Colm with a little girl stupendously covered with freckles, bouncing her on his knee or carrying her on his shoulder or, in at least six, throwing her into the air; he saw pictures of Colm and Jean-Pierre, Colm and De, and what must have been hundreds of De and Jean-Pierre alone.</p><p>The newest ones were of George and Bedelia and Pádraic, but Aimé recognised other people, too, even if he didn’t know their names – Father O’Flaherty, and some people from around Dublin, people that worked on other gardening projects in the city, people from one of the community colleges, old people, homeless people, charity workers, drug dealers.</p><p>Aimé’s gaze fell to one photo of Asmodeus that he guessed was from the ‘80s, because Asmodeus was wearing legwarmers and wrist bands, a crop top that looked like his chest was going to rip it apart at any moment, and extremely short jogging shorts that left very little to the imagin—</p><p>“<em>Ow!”</em> Aimé said, grabbing the sliotar Colm had thrown at his head and tossing it back, but it sailed past him and landed on a pair of discarded jeans. “This thing is fucking <em>hard</em>, Colm.”</p><p>“I’d rather the ball was hard than you,” Colm said, keeping his focus on his mushroom tank as he misted them with water. “You can wank over my brothers on your own time.”</p><p>“I was just <em>looking</em>.”</p><p>“You were <em>thinking</em>,” Colm said disgustedly. “It was bad enough the first time around. One of our neighbours had binoculars for when he went jogging. We barely even talked to her because she was a fucking Republican, but she bought him a Walkman for Christmas and offered to teach him stretches.”</p><p>Aimé started laughing.</p><p>“She couldn’t tell he was gay?”</p><p>“I think she thought there couldn’t possibly be more than one in one family,” Colm muttered. “Although back then a lot of them thought De was Farhad’s brother, not ours. I don’t think he looked anymore like Farhad than he looks like Jean or me, but a lot of Americans think the Middle East is one country where oil runs in rivers and speaks the same “Muslamic” language.”</p><p>Aimé looked at Colm’s back, turning his cheek on the cushion. “Isn’t it?” he asked mildly.</p><p>Colm leaned back from his mushroom tank, holding his spray bottle at his side and looking at him scathingly. “You want me to throw that ball at you again?”</p><p>“No thanks,” Aimé said cheerfully, and grinned when Colm clucked his tongue. “What kind of mushrooms are they?”</p><p>“These ones can go in a stir fry,” Colm said. “These three tanks. Oyster mushrooms here, these are maitake, and these ones are enoki.”</p><p>“What’s wrong with normal white ones?”</p><p>“Cremini? They’re fine,” Colm said, putting the lid back on the tank. He’d explained that mushrooms normally did best in the dark, but the four tanks he had in his room all had really dark, blue glass that stopped a lot of light from getting through, so you could look at them as they grew. Aimé could see the white spore trails moving through the soil in the tank, and he could see the layered mushrooms in each tank. “These just taste better, and Doris Keel, that American woman who works at the hardware shop grows those, so I just trade her for weed.”</p><p>Colm had a lot of bartering and trading agreements, a lot of them far more complicated than that one, and Aimé looked past him to his mushrooms again.</p><p>“And the fourth tank?”</p><p>“Well, you could put them in a stir fry,” Colm said. “Be a hell of a fucking dinner, though.”</p><p>“They for a special occasion?”</p><p>Colm gave him a sideways glance. “You eyeing up my mushrooms?”</p><p>“I’m <em>politely</em> asking when or if—”</p><p>“He takes my coke, he takes my—”</p><p>“You <em>offered</em>!”</p><p>Colm laughed, absently scratching his belly as he put his spray bottle and dropped onto his bed, putting his hand in his hair and leaning his head on his palm as he looked at Aimé. “We’ll do mushrooms at Christmas. Most of them are for Benedictine to take home, ‘cause she’s not got the patience for growing them, but there’s enough for a party.”</p><p>Aimé leaned back on the cushion, looking up at the photos on the wall.</p><p>Benedictine Zetrenne was a tall woman – the same height as Jean, judging from the photos – with eyes that were so brown they were almost black. She had an oval shaped face and a broad, rounded nose, and a small mouth with very plump lips. In some of the little postcards she was wearing a dark blue jacket with gold braid and epaulettes, but in a lot of the photographs she was wearing loud, print t-shirts and sleekly tailored suits. In every photo, she had a different hairstyle – different kinds of braids or dreads, at different lengths, sometimes partly or entirely dyed.</p><p>“What kind of lawyer does mushrooms?”</p><p>“The kind that doesn’t like coke.”</p><p>“She’s a winged angel too?”</p><p>“Yeah, but she’s got a heavier diet than Pádraic and Jean – she eats more meat, and she has more of a stomach for starches and drink. She works hard and plays hard, chases up a fifty-hour work week with what she can. She’s not as bad as Jean is, but…”</p><p>Aimé felt his brow furrow.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was at some university society, had told Aimé he didn’t want him to come for the first few weeks (“So that all the men are more disappointed once they realise I’m not available, Aimé. Why are you making that face?”), and Aimé had painted for a good few hours before he’d come over to the angels’ house. It was nearly nine – once Jean was home, they were going out for dinner, because the university society really didn’t understand, according to Jean, the concept of someone with dietary requirements that might not allow for pizza.</p><p>“Is Jean that bad?”</p><p>“When he’s working? Yeah,” Colm murmured, and he ran a hand through his hair. “You won’t have to worry about that for a few years – I think sometimes he goes back to school ‘cause he’ll work himself to death, otherwise, but when he’s working, he gets a little obsessed. Death kind of freaks Jean out, you know – like, from illness and injury. He always takes it a little personally, has to help. When he’s in a job, at a hospital, he can easily put in sixty or seventy hours, and even after that, he’ll still come do jobs with me, come to church, volunteer…”</p><p>It was easier to picture than he would have expected. For all Jean-Pierre lounged and played music, he studied a good part of the day, and Aimé knew that just because he’d done it before didn’t mean he slacked in his classrooms – he always paid attention in his lectures, and he knew Jean-Pierre aimed for an A on every essay, and hadn’t gotten a lower grade yet.</p><p>Aimé didn’t know what to make of the look on Colm’s face. His hands were loosely folded over his belly, and he had fallen onto his back, was staring up at the ceiling, his lips parting and pressing together again.</p><p>“You worry about him?” Aimé asked, and Colm let out a low, half-laughed noise.</p><p>“Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah, all the time. Benedictine and De can take care of themselves, you know, and if they get themselves into shit, they can get themselves out of it. Jean, he never fucking knows when to stop. Always starts fights he can’t finish.”</p><p>“Like with Myrddin?”</p><p>“Sure,” Colm murmured. “But if that was the only time, it’d not fuckin’ plague me. Sometimes I think he starts fights he can’t win just so one of us can prove we won’t abandon him to it.”</p><p>“Why don’t you?”</p><p>“Why don’t I,” Colm repeated tonelessly, with a slightly bitter smile. “You see Jean going up against a guy bigger than him, you’re not going to intervene?”</p><p>“Not sure size matters with Jean,” Aimé murmured, raising his eyebrows. “Can’t see him going up against someone he couldn’t take but I could. He’s way more lethal than I am.”</p><p>“It’s not about that, though,” Colm replied. “It’s about not being able to see him get hurt. De can do it. De can watch, sometimes, when Jean-Pierre gets himself into something bad – Hell, sometimes, De’ll fucking push him into it to teach him a lesson, and he’ll stop me from helping him until he’s decided Jean’s had enough. But I can’t do that. I see Jean hurt, and I hurt too. He’s my brother.”</p><p>“He’s De’s brother too.”</p><p>“De has more perspective than I do,” Colm said, almost under his breath. “Than any of us do. He can be neutral – I can’t.”</p><p>“I got the impression De was softer on Jean than you are,” Aimé said. “It’s what De seems to think.”</p><p>“Maybe he thinks that,” Colm said, and shrugged his shoulders. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed now, looking down at his fingernails, absently picking at them. “It’s not that he doesn’t love us – he does. He just… I feel like he sees the mechanisms that work us sometimes, the things that make us tick, but then he anticipates the things that’ll change us, too. I can’t do that.”</p><p>Colm looked up, meeting Aimé’s gaze, and then nodded to the framed photos of Heidemarie on the wall. “Take my daughter, for instance. I was working as a groundskeeper, maintenance man, for this fancy house – it was a Nazi officer and his wife, a little ways into the war, and I was gathering a lot of intel while I was there, passing it on. It wasn’t the first time I’d posed as a servant, won’t be the last time, either – Jean-Pierre can never do that kind of work, because he can’t fucking hold his temper back, he always has to be a honeypot or something because he’s happier whoring himself out than—”</p><p>Aimé tried not to let his expression twist, but Colm must have felt his irritation, and he faltered, raised his hands in a “peace” gesture.</p><p>“Sorry,” he muttered. “Anyway, I’ve done that kind of work before, no trouble, and when it came time to kill them, that was fine – I’d done that before too, and they were fucking Nazis, so who gives a shit, right? We’d normally leave the kids alive and just take them into town to be found, but I knew if I left her there, she’d just grow up to be like her parents, you know? Taken in by some other rich murderer and made… And I’d talked to her. She’d still been a baby, you know, only four, couldn’t do complicated sentences yet, but she’d been so sweet, and I couldn’t stand the idea of just <em>leaving</em> her there…”</p><p>“So I took her. And I take her out to this place I had in Belgium, far away from anywhere, and I am… absolutely losing it. I’ve babysitted before – we had kids in the village where I Fell, and ‘cause of my…” He gestured to his himself vaguely, “you know, I’d help sometimes, when kids were feverish, or I’d… We didn’t have therapy back then, but kids knew they could talk to me if they were scared of something they couldn’t explain, nightmares and shit, ‘cause they knew I’d understand how it made them <em>feel</em>, you know? And so I’m feeding her, and I’m talking to her, and I’m fucking hitting myself ‘cause what the fuck have I done? I’ve just taken this wee girl, and I’m not equipped to be anyone’s da, I never had one myself, how am I gonna do this? What do I do with her?”</p><p>Colm laughed softly, slowly shaking his head, and went on, “And De shows up on my doorstep. Says, “I thought you might want to talk about this.” Picks Heidemarie up where she’d been sitting on the floor and bounces her in the air, has her laughing – he loves kids, De, he’s fucking amazing with them, better than anyone I’ve ever met – and we sit, we talk. I kinda just… blurt everything out, and he listens. But he doesn’t seem surprised, and I tell him that, and he says, no, I’m not surprised. As soon as you went into that house, and I saw they had that baby, I knew this would happen, when it came down to it. And I said, what, you saw it, you know, saw the future? And he says, no, it wasn’t a premonition. I could just see you.”</p><p>“He doesn’t give advice, does he?” Aimé asked. “Just listens.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm murmured. “He’s got this… This <em>thing</em>, about free will. He gives advice sometimes, it’s not that he never does, but when he does, he tends to sort of… Give you a few options, and he almost always gives you stuff you were already thinking of, not anything new. He takes doubts and he leans on them, but he pushes certainties, too, reminds you of them. He said, if you really want to give Heidemarie up, you know that I can get a good home for her, that we can sort that out, but I don’t think that that’s what you want. And he was right, too – I felt guilty for wanting to keep her, to raise her, I’d never fuckin’… I’d never thought of being a dad before, but suddenly, I couldn’t imagine not taking care of her. So I did. Raised her myself, told her what had happened to her parents, I was honest about it, and she…”</p><p>Trailing off, he sighed.</p><p>Colm rubbed his palm over his face, shaking his head again, and then he put his hands on his knees. He tended to move around a lot, Aimé knew – he wasn’t great at staying still, wasn’t like De, who could remain perfectly poised, or like Jean, who’d lounge around all day, sometimes.</p><p>“De was like that with me,” Aimé said quietly. “In Grenoble, about Jean.”</p><p>“He treated you like one of us from the fucking start,” Colm said. “Like you were one of us. And I just thought it was him being… You know, <em>De,</em> but it’s you. Something about you.”</p><p>Aimé swallowed at that, felt abruptly like the whole world had been dropped on his shoulders, but Colm laughed.</p><p>“No, it’s not… It’s not a bad thing, Aimé. I think he just saw you, the way he sees me, sees Jean, sees a lot of people. Saw the… I don’t know. The way the wind is blowing, I guess, with you and Jean.”</p><p>“I don’t even know what way the fucking wind is blowing with me and Jean.”</p><p>“You and me both,” Colm muttered.</p><p>Aimé’s phone vibrated, and he flicked it open. “He’s finishing up now. You ready to go?”</p><p>“You like dogs, Aimé?” Colm asked, still looking into the middle distance.</p><p>Aimé blinked. “Dogs? Uh, yeah, I guess. I never had one. I think I like the little ones better? The really big ones freak me out a bit.”</p><p>Colm sighed.</p><p>Aimé felt himself smile slightly, felt his lips quirk into a smile as he started to catch on. “You really think you’re losing the battle with Jean and another dog, huh?” Aimé asked dryly, and Colm gave him a flat look.</p><p>“Don’t know what you find so funny,” he muttered. “If we get one, you’ll be walking it as much as I will.”</p><p>Aimé thought about that, for a second, at being part of a dog’s schedule, walking the dog when Colm didn’t, helping feed it, living with it. That was… That was a weird thought.</p><p>He’d never imagined having a dog, or a cat, even in a vague way, even in a theoretical one – he’d patted a few dogs on Stephen’s Green when they came up to sniff at his legs or his paintings, and he’d fed Peadar now and then, dropped him a few titbits of fish or meat, but that was all. There’d been cats on his grandmother’s vineyard, but he’d never fed them or seen them fed, had just stroked them when they occasionally wandered up to him.</p><p>“I, uh,” Aimé said. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d mind.”</p><p>Colm smiled a close-lipped smile. “Let’s make shapes,” he said, clapping his hands together, and – as he had been instructed – Aimé grabbed a thicker jumper for Jean from his chest of drawers before they went out to the car.</p><p>“You know,” Colm said as they pulled out of the drive, “I could feel how anxious you were about seeing Pádraic last night. I didn’t realise it was because you’d been picking up more ISL.”</p><p>Aimé shrugged his shoulders.</p><p>“It was nice,” he said, looking out of the window, and when Mrs Delaney waved at them as they drove by, Aimé raised his hand in a small wave back at the same time Colm did. “We used to eat like that on the vineyard some evenings, but there was no space inside – we’d put together tables and eat outside in the yard.”</p><p>Mémé had been pretty quiet during big dinners – she’d liked to listen to what everyone was saying, sit at the head of the table and survey all of it like a ship captain overlooking her crew, but Pádraic had talked a lot through dinner, mostly to Colm, his hands moving whenever he wasn’t eating. Colm and Pádraic had talked a lot, and Aimé hadn’t been able to follow a lot of the conversation, but he’d been able to get some of it – the two of them talking about some new initiative that was pissing Pádraic off at the school, something about how they’d fucked up the retrofit of one of the buildings for wheelchair access; Bedelia and Jean-Pierre had talked about Bedelia’s study methods, and the two of them had back-and-forthed for a long time about radiography, about different fields of medicine, about study methods…</p><p>George had turned to Aimé and asked what he had been painting recently, and it had been—</p><p>Well. No one had ever asked him that before, not in a sit-down setting. People asked it at parties, people had asked it as the museum, but that was a politeness thing – you gave a two word answer, and you asked the same kind of thing back. Jean and Colm never asked – Colm asked if he was <em>enjoying</em> what he was painting, which wasn’t the same thing at all; Jean-Pierre insisted Aimé didn’t tell him until he could look himself, and that was endearing in itself, the way Jean would come into Aimé’s flat after a week away and run immediately into his studio to peer at the canvases that were curing, and tell Aimé very loudly which his favourites were.</p><p>Faced with the question, so earnestly asked, with George’s eyes wide and focused on Aimé’s face as he picked at his fruit platter, Aimé almost didn’t know what to say.</p><p>“Um, I’m doing a lot of… A lot of uniforms recently. I did some soldiers a few months back, but I’ve been doing other stuff – I did one of an airline crew, of nurses and doctors, boat crews, I saw a line-up of a crew of a rescue boat with the RNLI, of the guys lined up in their lifeboat jackets. I like the way they look lined up, I like doing angles of their chests when they’re in a row.”</p><p>“Why?” George asked.</p><p>If it was asked by someone else – if it was his mother or father asking, someone in his class, it would have meant “what the fuck are you doing with your life?”, and Aimé would have taken it that way even if that <em>wasn’t</em> what was meant by it.</p><p>From George, it meant… Why?</p><p>“It shut me and Pádraic up last night,” Colm said in the passenger seat.</p><p>“What did?” Aimé asked, glancing over.</p><p>“You realised George had never seen any of your art, but he wanted you to tell him about it. Really realised it. Felt like a flash grenade had gone off in your chest.” Colm took one hand off the wheel and made an explosive motion, spreading his fingers out as he pulled his fist away from his chest.</p><p>Aimé shifted in his seat, embarrassed, felt the burn in his cheeks.</p><p>“Pádraic said you were a good lad,” Colm said.</p><p>“Like that makes me feel like less of a homo.”</p><p>“You’re already a fucking homo,” Colm said. “Being flattered George gives a shit about your paintings didn’t change that. Why do all the restaurants he picks have shit fucking parking?”</p><p>“Because all the restaurants he picks are in Dublin, where parking is shit,” Aimé said, and Colm groaned.</p><p>Twenty minutes later, they met Jean at the table, and Aimé noticed three things in succession.</p><p>First, Jean-Pierre was still wearing his coat over his shoulders because he’d worn a lighter jumper today when it had been warmer in the morning, and was obviously regretting it now, given that he’d also picked the closest table to the fire.</p><p>Second, Jean-Pierre had ordered for Colm and Aimé while he’d been waiting for them – there were two bread baskets on the table, one filled with a thick, nut-filled loaf Aimé knew Colm liked, and a white demi baguette for Aimé, as well as a jug of pear cider and a bottle of Spanish Mourvèdre for Aimé.</p><p>Third, when he saw Aimé, he <em>beamed</em>, the sun all but shining out of his face, and he rose from his seat without withdrawing his hands from where they were buried somewhere in the vicinity of his armpits, falling immediately against Aimé’s chest and burying his freezing cold nose against Aimé’s neck.</p><p>“God, you’re cold,” Aimé said, pressing his lips against the side of Jean-Pierre’s temple, feeling the cool of his skin against his mouth. “Were you shivering at that soc thing?”</p><p>“I sat on the radiator,” Jean-Pierre said miserably, and Aimé laughed. “Did you bring another jumper?”</p><p>“Will this disgusting mohair number do?”</p><p>“Oh, <em>yes</em>, this is my warmest, Aimé—” Jean-Pierre said gratefully as he took the jumper out of Aimé’s hands, and Aimé pulled the coat off of his shoulders, watching as Jean-Pierre pulled the jumper on over the one he was already wearing. It really was fucking ugly – the jumper was a kind of dark green like pond scum, and it was one of Jean-Pierre’s most recent wardrobe additions, something he’d bought in the witches’ market last month, and it was slightly shaggy, but impossibly – uncomfortably – silky where you touched it. “You know why I love this jumper?”</p><p>“Because you have no body fat and are about as well-insulated as a bus shelter?”</p><p>Undeterred, Jean-Pierre smiled sweetly, reaching up to cup Aimé’s cheek, stroking his thumb under his eye and leaning down toward him. “It’s the same colour as your eye,” he said breathlessly.</p><p>Too breathlessly, actually. It was very sweet – sugary sweet – and it made Aimé’s chest feel warm and full, but the breathlessness was too far.</p><p>“What did you do, sweetheart?” Aimé asked in a low murmur against Jean-Pierre’s mouth, and Jean-Pierre leaned back by half an inch, retaining the sweet expression but making it just a little more innocent, his lips parting, his eyes widening.</p><p>“<em>Aimé</em>,” Jean-Pierre said, wounded. “I—”</p><p>“He wants to fuck a bodybuilder at his choral society who kept staring at him,” Colm said long-sufferingly as he poured himself a second glass of cider. “Let him and his roommates run a train on him.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s innocence evaporated like mist, and he scrunched up his face, mouth twisting as he turned to glare at the back of Colm’s head. He said something in Irish that Aimé didn’t entirely understand, but was fairly certain was a very foul idiom, and Colm made a vague, grumbling sound, waving a hand over his shoulder.</p><p>“Don’t fucking bitch at me, Jean, it’s not like he’s going to say <em>no</em>.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre looked back to Aimé, his eyes as wide as dinnerplates.</p><p>“How big is the bodybuilder?”</p><p>“Six foot four,” Jean-Pierre murmured, fingers stroking over Aimé’s chest. “He doesn’t fit in the desks with the desk that folds down.” Aimé felt his eyebrows raise, trying to imagine that. “He has this gangbang video saved on his phone, on his <em>home screen</em>, and it’s six men and a—”</p><p>“You pickpocket his phone?” Aimé asked.</p><p>The innocent look popped back up like Aimé had pressed a button. “… No?” Jean-Pierre answered experimentally.</p><p>Aimé kissed him, couldn’t stop himself, felt the warm feeling burst even bigger inside him, and he squeezed Jean-Pierre all the tighter, crushed Jean down against his chest and felt the way Jean-Pierre relaxed into it, as though he’d let Aimé hold him forever.</p><p>“He normally fuck guys?” Aimé asked against Jean’s mouth, and Jean-Pierre didn’t try the innocent look this time: he grinned, showed his pretty white teeth, and his eyes gleamed with a kind of mischief that made Aimé’s skin tingle.</p><p>“No,” he said, the breathlessness real this time.</p><p>“Excuse me,” Colm said desperately to a passing waiter. “Could I get a triple whiskey?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0032"><h2>32. Christmas Presents</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Jean-Pierre came home, it was with a great many books packed under his arms, letting them rest against his chest to keep them from falling down to the floor as he walked along the uneven cobblestones and climbing over the gate into the yard. It was very small, a modest, walled-in space with scarcely anywhere to plant vegetables, but that hadn’t stopped Jules from trying.</p><p>“Hello, Jean-Pierre,” Marguerite said as he stepped inside, and Jean-Pierre beamed at her, leaned down to kiss her on each cheek. Anicroche, a tired dog now with grey about her muzzle and whitening her dark brows, was standing with her body leaned against Marguerite’s leg, and when Jean-Pierre reached down to stroke her fur, she leaned her cheek against his palm.</p><p>Marguerite had a great many friends in Paris, had made a great many in a few short years – she took pieces of sewing to do, piecework that she did each day, and some evenings, Jean-Pierre would sit with her and join her in her needlework. It would help him, he knew, when he needed to perform surgery.</p><p>His fingers could never be so nimble as hers, nor so quick at embroidery, but it was pleasant indeed to sit together of an evening beside the fire, the two of them working in the quiet with Anicroche laid across Jean-Pierre’s feet.</p><p>“Did you have a good day?” Jean-Pierre asked quietly.</p><p>“I did,” Marguerite said quietly, with a small nod of her head. “Anicroche and I are going to walk to visit my friend Bernice. Jules is in bed – he isn’t well.”</p><p>“I feel it,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “It is a headache, a cold – he would not let you tend him?”</p><p>“He doesn’t like to be a bother,” Marguerite murmured. “You know this.”</p><p>She patted the side of Jean-Pierre’s cheek, and Jean felt the emotion that radiated from her, a sense of quiet pride, of warmth, of gentle affection. When first they had come to Paris, she had not known what to expect, had spent every moment wondering if the rug would be pulled out from under them at any moment, but she had confidence in Jean-Pierre now, in his degree, and in his commitment to Jules.</p><p>“Take care of him,” Marguerite said softly.</p><p>“Always,” Jean-Pierre promised, as he ever did, and as Marguerite stepped out with Anicroche beside her on a small rope – once upon a time, Anicroche would rush about their feet as they walked in the city, but linger close by, and these days she needed a small rope just to ensure they saw when she got tired and needed to linger a moment on the path – Jean-Pierre moved further into their apartment, and into his and Jules’ bedroom.</p><p>Jules was lying on his side under a few blankets, although the day was mild, and although he was quietly miserable, exhausted and irritable, struggling with the weight of his cold. It was not due to its severity, but merely its constancy – he had been a little under the weather last night, but evidently he had some sort of cold, because he had not been able to pass the day without taking an easy breath through his blocked nose, and his head was aching.</p><p>When he saw Jean-Pierre, a sort of sweet relief emanated from him, and even though he was exhausted, he looked up at Jean-Pierre and smiled. When Jean-Pierre came to him, Jules leaned forward and rested his forehead on Jean-Pierre’s hip. He gently curled his hand in Jules’ hair, which was slightly damp with sweat, and massaged his scalp for a few moments before he pulled away, wetting a cloth and concentrating very hard on one of the interesting symbols that Asmodeus had taught him, making it cool, and laying it on Jules’ brow.</p><p>He wasn’t extremely hot – were he feverish, Jean-Pierre would undoubtly take his illness more seriously – but he was overheated enough that the cloth made him let out a sigh of relief, and Jean-Pierre then rifled through the remedies he had been learning recently, took a peppermint balm and came back, spreading a little of it on Jules’ chest.</p><p>Jules took his first breath through his nostrils in the course of the day, and Jean-Pierre smiled slightly at the way his eyes widened and watered, at the desperate surprise and relief writ on his features.</p><p>“<em>Mon ange</em>,” he said lovingly. “<em>Mon medécin</em>.”</p><p>“All yours,” Jean-Pierre said, climbing onto the bed with Jules and sitting cross-legged, leaning back against Jules’ middle and taking his book into his lap. “Would you like me to read to you?”</p><p>“About?” asked Jules.</p><p>“It’s in French,” said Jean-Pierre, because this was not always the case – often, the books he brought home to read would be in Latin or Spanish or even English, and when Asmodeus came through Paris, which he did now and then, he would bring Jean-Pierre even more advanced books written in Arabic.</p><p>“And it’s <em>about</em>…” pressed Jules.</p><p>“Diseases of a woman with child,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>Jules laughed. He coughed a little as he did, but Jean-Pierre could hear that the cough came from high up in his throat, and lacked any significant phlegmy depth to it – most of his congestion was in his nose, and as unpleasant as this was, its mildness was a comfort to Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“No, thank you,” Jules murmured, and reached for Jean-Pierre’s wrist, slowly pulling his hand to curl in Jules’ hair again. He closed his eyes as Jean-Pierre curled his fingers through it. “Hey, Jean-Pierre.”</p><p>“Yes, Jules?”</p><p>“You mustn’t grieve me forever when I die, you know. You must find another happiness.”</p><p>It felt as though the pit had abruptly fallen out of Jean-Pierre’s stomach, and he looked down at Jules, feeling his mouth fall open. “Jules—” he protested sharply, but Jules hushed him softly, turning his head to brush his lips against Jean’s wrist. “You are not dying, Jules. You have a cold, that is all.”</p><p>“I’m not dying now,” Jules agreed. “I won’t be dying soon, I don’t think – I hope not. But Maman and I will die, Jean, and you won’t. You need to prepare yourself for that. You need to remember.”</p><p>“Asmodeus says some angels die,” Jean-Pierre said. “Maybe I will.”</p><p>“He was here today,” Jules murmured. “He left some books for you, and a pair of boots he thought you would like.”</p><p>“He told you to say this,” Jean-Pierre said sharply, feeling the anger rise in his belly, sudden and sharp and blinding, but before he could get fully to his feet, Jules caught him by his belt and tugged him down again. “This was wrong of him, putting such ideas in your head as—”</p><p>“I always knew I’d die, my love – I’m human. You’re not. It’s okay.”</p><p>“It’s <em>not</em>,” Jean-Pierre hissed sharply. “It’s <em>not</em>, it is <em>not</em>, and you—”</p><p>“I’ll die,” Jules repeated again, and he clutched Jean-Pierre’s hand tighter this time, pulling it against his cheek, squeezing his fingers and kissing his palm. “And you will grieve, but your life will not end just because mine does, Jean-Pierre. My love will go with you.”</p><p>“Why must you talk like this?” Jean-Pierre demanded, overwhelmed by the sudden feeling that burst in him like a gutter overflowing, feeling as though he would soon burst into tears or perhaps break apart at his seams, but Jules kissed him once again, so gently, though his lips were dry for lying in bed the day through and scarce drinking at all.</p><p>“Because I love you,” Jules murmured. “Because I don’t want it to take you by surprise when it comes.”</p><p>“My brother—”</p><p>“Your brother made me tea, and said he was glad you had me to look after you,” said Jules quietly, adjusting the compress over his brow. “He didn’t bring up me dying, Jean-Pierre. I’ve just been thinking about it.”</p><p>“No,” Jean-Pierre said, and tried to stand again, but Jules tugged him close and this time wrapped one arm around his waist, sending Jean-Pierre’s book tumbling to the ground as he pulled Jean to lie beside him. Jean-Pierre pressed his body against Jules’, although the peppermint balm was overpowering in its scent, and made him light-headed with its severity.</p><p>“You don’t have to worry about it today, sweetheart,” Jules said quietly, kissing Jean-Pierre’s knuckles. “I’ll be here for a long time, yet, and Maman too.”</p><p>“I don’t want you to,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “I forbid it.”</p><p>“I’ll try not to,” Jules said quietly.</p><p>Jean-Pierre squeezed his hand more tightly – for a long time, they lay there together, and Jean-Pierre ignored his studies entirely. When Marguerite returned and Anicroche climbed onto the bed with them, she squirreled herself between their tangled legs.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“Give me your hands, Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said softly. It was Saturday morning, and he was straddling Aimé’s waist. Aimé, last night, had said he had fucked a girl a few times in his teens who was interested in tantric sex, and he had teased Jean-Pierre for quite some time, not letting him come even as he laughed against his mouth about the weight-lifter, Gavin, in Jean-Pierre’s choral society.</p><p>“You don’t want to try it properly, do you?” Aimé asked as he obediently put his hands up, and Jean-Pierre delivered a kiss to the palm of Aimé’s left hand before turning to his right, beginning to untie the bandage around his palm. “The tantric thing?”</p><p>“It was frustrating,” Jean-Pierre muttered.</p><p>Aimé laughed at him, leaning his head back on the pillow. “’Cause you didn’t listen when I was trying to fucking tell you about it, Jean – it’s not about <em>frustrating</em> you, it’s about not trying to come.”</p><p>“What is the point in sex if I don’t come?” Jean-Pierre demanded, and Aimé laughed again, obediently tilting his hand so that Jean-Pierre could stroke his finger over the now-healed cut in the centre of his palm, where the scab had already come away. It was a light pink, and it wasn’t a thick line – especially on Aimé’s palm, he doubted it would last as a scar, as it really hadn’t been so deep.</p><p>“It’s about… I don’t know, a lot of fucking philosophical shit, about connectedness, but it’s not about getting to the end, it’s about making it last. It’s about being in the moment, sweetheart – it’s not about just <em>delaying</em> gratification, but taking it out as a goal.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre wrinkled his nose. “Teasing.”</p><p>“<em>No</em>,” Aimé said, and he looked up at Jean-Pierre with affection plain in his lopsided features, and despite his mild irritation, Jean-Pierre felt soaked with love. He pressed a kiss to the healed cut on Aimé’s palm and then held Aimé’s hands, both of them, by their fingers, that he might brush his lips across both sets of his knuckles. “How’s it healed up, Doc?”</p><p>“Well,” Jean-Pierre murmured, squeezing Aimé’s hands. “It did not cut very deeply. You must be gentle with your hands, Aimé: how will you hold me without them?”</p><p>“With my legs,” Aimé said, pushing his knees up and nudging Jean-Pierre’s arse, making him giggle.</p><p>“You took this tantric sex seriously?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“No,” Aimé said. “Not really. It was a thing we tried a few times – I don’t find it that easy either, going slow, but patience can be a good thing, Jean.”</p><p>“Patience is a card game for old women,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé laughed very hard at that, shoving Jean-Pierre harder in the lower back this time so that he fell down onto Aimé’s chest, that Aimé might kiss him on the mouth.</p><p>“Okay, baby,” Aimé murmured against his mouth, tone condescending. “No patience. I’ll make sure to bring you everything you want like that.” Aimé snapped his fingers, and Jean-Pierre chuckled, leaning and nipping the side of Aimé’s jaw. “That what you want, for me to cater to your every whim?”</p><p>“You promise?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“What do you want to do today?” Aimé asked, stroking his fingers gently up and down Jean-Pierre’s sides. “I want to stay at mine tonight, paint for a while, but we can go do something today, if you want. Or do you have essays?”</p><p>“I’m on top of my studies,” Jean-Pierre said, putting his hands on Aimé’s chest and squeezing each side of his breast under his fingers, making Aimé chuckle and playfully smack one of his forearms. “If we get Christmas presents, can we keep them at yours?”</p><p>Aimé blinked up at Jean-Pierre for a moment, as though surprised to be asked, his eyebrows raising, and he looked wildly around, but then he nodded his head. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, of course. Uh, I don’t know about Colm, but they have these enchanter’s paint sets in the craft place in the witches’ market, I was thinking I’d pick one up for him. They come with these wood cases – decent quality, but not nearly as good as the brushes and paints. I was thinking I’d pick up a carrying pouch from a leatherworker’s at the same time, something he’d like to carry around.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre stared down at Aimé, his lips parted. It was a delightful surprise, one he did not wholly expect – Farhad had thought of Colm and Asmodeus at Christmas, would always comb through the thrift stores he could for cheap romance novels to pack into a little sack for Asmodeus, and would likewise collect nuts and bolts and bits of scrap for Colm.</p><p>It had been very sweet, very endearing – the year he had not been fit to comb about for them, Jean-Pierre had done it for him, and helped him back the sacks even as his hands had shook, and he had struggled to tie their bows.</p><p>Jules had always insisted, of course, on having small gifts put aside for Asmodeus on Saint Nicholas’ day – a sweet or a jar of good honey or a nice pen, or from time to time, a handsome piece of cloth or a scarf. He had led such things for Asmodeus, at the time – and when he had died, Asmodeus had come, and said such nice things of Jules, that Jules always thought of him.</p><p>“You went quiet, ange,” Aimé said gently.</p><p>“He does not enchant so much,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “You think he needs an enchantment set?”</p><p>“He doesn’t have one,” Aimé said. “He has an enchanter’s hammer and a carving knife, but he doesn’t have a portable paint set, right? I helped him pack his trunk, I didn’t see one.”</p><p>“I love you, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>Aimé huffed out a low, amused sound. “Does that mean he has one, or doesn’t he?”</p><p>“I don’t think he does,” Jean-Pierre said, reaching to cup Aimé’s handsome cheeks, his palms sliding over his stubble, because he nearly had his proper beard back again, now. “It pleases me that you think so of my brother. What of Colm?”</p><p>“Colm, I don’t know,” Aimé said.</p><p>“We are ships in the night then, passing one another in different directions,” Jean-Pierre said. “I had no idea what I might get for Asmodeus – for Colm, a gift set for his car. Seat covers, I will make them, with the tricolour for the headrests, and wrapped in the seat covers, small things – a few CDs, perhaps one of those quizzes for long journeys.”</p><p>“You can make car seat covers?” Aimé asked, tilting his head back further so that he could look up at Jean-Pierre’s face.</p><p>“Of course,” Jean-Pierre said, with a small nod of his head. “I will have to work by machine – they need to be made of some sort of nylon, something strengthened, but he never remembers to buy seat covers for himself, though he prefers to have them than not. He has the important things – a tool kit, a first aid kit, a cool bag for groceries when he needs, but not seat covers, and even when he sees them, he does not buy them if they will not fit exactly. That is the benefit in a brother who can tailor these things for him.”</p><p>Aimé bit his lip a moment, sliding his palm over Jean-Pierre’s belly under his pyjama top, pressing on his skin. His expression was thoughtful and focused, and he asked, “You think those two are, uh, I don’t know. Equivalent?”</p><p>“My brothers are not equivalent,” Jean-Pierre said. “They have different needs and desires.”</p><p>“I always have to make sure whatever I get my dad is worth the same or less as what I get for my mother,” Aimé said quietly, clucking his tongue. “I gave her a painting once, recreated a photo she’d put up of her and her friends on her profile and my dad told me later she’d had a whole meltdown about it, got upset at how I’d fobbed her off with something I’d made instead of something worth having.”</p><p>“Your mother is a cunt, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>Aimé coughed suddenly, choking on his own spit as he laughed, and Jean-Pierre leaned back from him, passing him the water at their bedside as Aimé pulled himself together, swallowing.</p><p>“Asmodeus would love one of your paintings,” Jean-Pierre said. “He likes art – he likes your art. The ones you have done of dancers, you did nutcrackers in their uniforms – he would like that. Asmodeus loves Tchaikovsky.”</p><p>“Nah,” Aimé murmured. “Nah, I, uh. I don’t want to do that. I know he likes the <em>Nutcracker</em> – he said he likes Tchaikovsky’s ballets when we went to see <em>Ondine</em>, that his favourite was <em>Sleeping Beauty</em>. But I wouldn’t want to give him a painting – even if I did, he wouldn’t have anywhere to put it.”</p><p>“He would be pleased,” Jean-Pierre said again. “Flattered.”</p><p>“No, Jean, not this year.” Aimé said firmly, and Jean-Pierre pouted his lips, but made no further fuss of it, loosely biting at the back of his lip. “You want to sign gifts from both of us?”</p><p>“Please,” Jean-Pierre said. “I don’t know what to get Asmodeus, and your idea is far better than any of mine – and I wanted to split my gift for George with you anyway.”</p><p>“Why, what do you want to get George?”</p><p>“I want to get him some nice clothes,” Jean-Pierre said. “All of his are horrible, except for the ones Pádraic makes him.”</p><p>“Well,” Aimé said, with his wonderful smile, “you can’t decide how other people dress, Jean. If George likes—”</p><p>“But he doesn’t choose clothes he likes,” Jean-Pierre interrupted. “He gets the ones with fastenings he can do – the cardigans Pádraic has made for him have large toggles, like on a duffel coat, so that they’re easy for his fingers, but all of the trousers he gets are horrible and loose-fitting and so high-waisted, more than I think he likes. He wants to match Bedelia and the way she dresses, but everything made with easy fastenings is loose and dull in colour – I thought we could pick out some handsome things for him, things he would like, and I can strip the buttons and zips and replace them with magnet fastenings or Velcro, whichever is more appropriate.”</p><p>Aimé stared at up at him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre wasn’t quite sure of his expression, what to make of it, of the way his lips were parted, his eyes focused directly on Jean-Pierre’s face, the way he slowly blinked, his eyelashes showing as he blinked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre thought of the symbols painted invisibly on his skin, the ones that dampened his natural empathy, that he maintained with the same everyday attention as he did his fingernails or his hair, a part of his usual ablutions, and considered for the thousandth time washing them away, that he might truly comprehend Aimé, feel his emotions as easily as he did his own.</p><p>But—</p><p>But it wasn’t only Aimé he would feel. He would feel everyone, feel people’s grief, their frustration, their fatigue, feel the petty injustices that cut everyone he met laid heavy upon their backs, and as much as he ached for further insight into Aimé, he did not want the pain of everyone else in the process.</p><p>“He’s young,” said Jean-Pierre slowly, to explain himself. “It is not right to me, that he should dress himself as an old man when he wants to match his girlfriend, only because his hands are uncoordinated. The small buttons cut at him, and he gets himself caught in zippers even after he spends such time wrestling with them.”</p><p>“How come you’re such a cruel bitch half the time, and then you say thoughtful shit like that that makes me want to start crying?” Aimé asked, but his smile was so indulgent and so full of warmth Jean-Pierre felt he could bathe in it, and it was such a relief that Jean-Pierre felt himself sigh.</p><p>“They come from the same skill set,” he said smugly, and Aimé laughed, wrapping his arms around Jean-Pierre’s middle, dragging him up Aimé’s torso until Jean-Pierre was straddling his chest. “Are you going to start crying?”</p><p>“Uh uh,” Aimé said. “Why, you want me to?”</p><p>“Not yet,” Jean-Pierre said, smiling as he slid his hands slowly around Aimé’s neck, squeezing delicately and enjoying the way Aimé pressed his throat into Jean’s hands, his eyelids falling closed.</p><p>“Bedelia?”</p><p>“Shoes,” said Jean-Pierre. “She likes the basketball shoes, with the painted designs. They have ones with easy-cleaning enchantments.”</p><p>“We can get a pair each for her and George, matching ones,” Aimé murmured. “Complementary colours – I had enchanted shoes when I was a kid that tied my laces for me, until I learned. I can do that enchantment for George, if you want to take the clothes. What about your sister, about Benedictine?”</p><p>“Oh, I got her gift already,” Jean-Pierre said. “A new handgun with exchangeable chambers, so she can choose from different calibres depending on what she is using it for – it takes a basic nine millimetre Luger, of course, for the everyday, but she can load it with heavier cartridges as she needs.” Aimé blinked, and Jean-Pierre added, “But I can sign it from you too.”</p><p>“You don’t have to sign it from me,” Aimé said, and he looked a little off-balance now, some colour in his cheeks, his heart beating a little faster and his pulse speeding, so that Jean-Pierre could feel his throat under his palms – he wasn’t used yet to talk of weaponry and firearms, and guns frightened him a little, it seemed to Jean-Pierre.</p><p>He thought about it, the idea of Aimé with a rifle braced against him, or feeling the recoil of a pistol in his hands. The very thought thrilled him, delighted him, but he did not want to push at it right away, not if it would lead to Aimé resisting.</p><p>“I can get her a bath bomb or something.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre beamed. “She would like that,” he said, and Aimé smiled at him. He reached up, loosely gripping at Jean-Pierre’s wrists and pulling Jean-Pierre to squeeze his neck more tightly. “What would you do if I killed you?” Jean-Pierre asked, and Aimé’s pulse sped slightly faster, but his eyes narrowed instead of widening, and his lips shifted into a small smile.</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt light-headed and fluttery.</p><p>“Well,” Aimé said, “I’d die. But first, I’d be <em>very</em> disappointed.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt himself laugh, the sound coming breathless from his mouth, “I want to fuck you,” he said, loosening his grip. He didn’t usually like to, preferred to ride Aimé than to fiddle with the harness and a toy, but Aimé was obscenely sensitive, and there was a true wonder in the way that Aimé came apart when he was fucked, the way his eyes teared up and he couldn’t keep back his sobs. It was messy and overwhelming and it was so very easy to turn Aimé’s pleasure onto that hot-white edge of pleasure-pain—</p><p>Aimé wet his lips with his tongue. His cheeks darkened.</p><p>“Okay,” he said, in a forced casual tone, but Jean-Pierre could see his anticipation, his excitement, even as his hands slid to grasp at Jean-Pierre’s arse, squeezing his buttocks. “Well. Get your toy chest out, then.”</p><p>As Jean-Pierre stood to his feet and began rifling through the lower drawer, he listened to Aimé in the bathroom, the sound of the sink running, heard Aimé’s sigh.</p><p>“What do you want for Christmas?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“Other than your cock?” was the dry response.</p><p>“This isn’t for Christmas. But I could get a bigger one.”</p><p>“If you got a bigger one, it’d kill me.”</p><p>“You are enticing me or discouraging me?”</p><p>Aimé’s laugh echoed off the bathroom ceiling. “I don’t want anything, Jean,” he said mildly. “I’m pretty happy.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre spent a moment on his knees, his fingers loosely entangled in the strap of his harness, basking in it. Did Aimé know what it meant to him, when he said such things as these?</p><p>“D’accord, Aimé,” Jean-Pierre said, and put the harness on.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t move when the door opened, instead remaining on the ground beside the unlit fire, his arms wrapped around his knees, his feet rested against the ground. It was cold, but he didn’t want to go get more wood.</p><p>He didn’t want to move.</p><p>He didn’t want to do anything.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Jean-Pierre,” said Asmodeus, and Jean-Pierre looked up at him as he gently closed the door shut behind him.</p><p>Across the room, Jules was laid in his bed, still under the covers. He was lying on his side, his cheek resting on the pillow, and he looked as though he were sleeping, for all the world. He looked better, now, than he had in the past few weeks – his skin was not so blotchy as it had been, and he wasn’t coughing, wasn’t covered in a sheen of sweat.</p><p>He had been cold when Jean-Pierre had woke up beside him. Cold, and not yet stiff.</p><p>“You got my letter,” Jean-Pierre whispered.</p><p>“I came as soon as I could, I’m sorry,” Asmodeus said softly as he stepped closer. “I wanted to get here sooner.”</p><p>He pushed Jean-Pierre away from the wall, and Jean-Pierre went stiff, resisting where the other angel might force him to stand up, but he didn’t do that: he sank into the gap between Jean-Pierre and the wall and held Jean-Pierre between his thighs – he had large thighs, and Jean-Pierre and Jules had gone to see him dance ballet some years ago – and gathered Jean-Pierre gently up against his chest, his arms wrapping around Jean-Pierre, his chin resting on Jean’s head.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was too tall for it, really, or he should have been, but grief and exhaustion had made him very small, and he nestled himself back against his brother’s chest, touching his arms and squeezing at his flesh.</p><p>Asmodeus felt strange, to touch, inexhaustibly and incredibly empty, or full with something Jean-Pierre didn’t and couldn’t understand – he was blank, where every other feeling was utterly overwhelming, and Jean-Pierre tethered himself to it as though it were his anchor.</p><p>He had almost felt alright, burying Anicroche. She had been so at peace, when she’d passed away beside the fire in Jean-Pierre’s lap, and he had thought that if this was what grief was like, perhaps he could withstand it, because he had loved her so very much, and he had thought…</p><p>But Marguerite, when she had died, had destroyed his notion that grief might be alright. He had wept for weeks, felt the weight of both Jules’ grief and his own in constant, painful rhythm inside him, and he had felt as though the world were ending without Marguerite to lead them by, without Marguerite to sit with and to sew with and to listen to, and he had felt the ripples behind her she had left, of everyone she had known and loved in Paris, who ached, too, for her passing.</p><p>Jules…</p><p>Jules was everything.</p><p>And now he, too, all these years later, was dead beneath their bed covers, and Jean-Pierre was alone.</p><p>“Can you bring him back?” Jean-Pierre asked, in a very small voice.</p><p>He knew that Asmodeus had power he did not that, that very few people had. He knew this, although Asmodeus did not like to say it, and did not, indeed, like to show it, but he knew that it was true – he had seen Asmodeus do complicated magic in subtle, hidden ways, not wishing to draw attention to it, but Jean-Pierre had seen him.</p><p>Asmodeus, cold and unyielding and the centre of Jean-Pierre’s world, now that everyone he had ever loved was dead, held him in his big, warm arms, and leaned his chin more against the side of Jean-Pierre’s head, his breath misting through Jean-Pierre’s hair.</p><p>“It is possible,” he said quietly, in his deep, smooth voice. “Necromancy is a complicated magic for which a high price must be paid, but it is possible.”</p><p>“Do it,” Jean-Pierre said. “Do it, please, Asmodeus, please—”</p><p>“You would have to kill someone else,” Asmodeus said. “And channel the power of their life as a focus, break the boundary between life and death and tear what is left of Jules from the afterlife, if you would like to call it an afterlife, and bind it to some spirit here, give it consciousness again, instead of only soul. That is two lives for a renewal of Jules – and when you returned him to the corpse, it would remain a corpse. He would be cold, and stiff, and you could keep him from rotting, but only for a time. He would be in stupendous pain. I can teach you how if you ask me.”</p><p>“Teach me,” Jean-Pierre said again, although he heard his voice waver. “I want him back. I want him back, Asmodeus, I need him back, I need—"</p><p>“He would be different,” Asmodeus whispered. “In constant agony, and distant – he would lose memories in the process, and feeling, too. He would lose stability, and he would know that he was incomplete, that he was wrong. He would loathe his state of being, and might not even remember that he loved you.”</p><p>“I don’t care,” Jean-Pierre said, and this time his voice did not only waver, but cracked – his eyes were very nearly wet. “I don’t care, I don’t care, I want him, bring him back, Asmodeus, I—"</p><p>“Do you want me to?” Asmodeus asked softly. “You had a priest read him his rites, didn’t you?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre whispered.</p><p>“You are a Catholic? You believe in those teachings?”</p><p>“<em>Yes</em>,” Jean-Pierre whispered again, more sharply, this time, because Asmodeus had poked at the church before, but this was not the time—</p><p>“Then Jules, as we speak, is being welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven, to the waiting arms of his mother. Would you tear him from that, and bring him to a Hell on Earth, instead?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre began to sob, and he turned in Asmodeus’ arms, crying desperately against his chest and holding onto him as tightly as he dared. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t lend voice to his ailing throat and his dry tongue, so he merely shook his head and cried and let his brother hold him tighter.</p><p>“I know, Jean-Pierre,” Asmodeus whispered against his hair, holding him very tightly. “I know it hurts, I know it’s unfair, but you’re not alone. I have you – I’ll always have you, Jean. The pain will not be this strong forever.”</p><p>“It will,” Jean-Pierre said. “It’ll never go away.”</p><p>“It will never go away,” Asmodeus agreed, and he cupped Jean-Pierre’s cheeks, pulling Jean to look up at his eyes, which were so deeply green, such an emerald colour. “Your grief will be carried with you for so long as you live – but it will not be all you carry, Jean. I promise.”</p><p>Asmodeus held him until Jean-Pierre felt fit to be let go.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“Tell me about Jules,” said Aimé. The two of them were sitting on the sofa, a platter of fruit and cheese between them, and twice, Aimé had called Jean-Pierre a bird because Jean had reached between for Aimé’s plate to take a small piece of his breadcrust.</p><p>“He was a farmer,” Jean-Pierre said softly, turning a piece of kiwi inside-out and sliding his finger over its furry skin, watching the way the fruit gleamed in the soft light as it was stretched and pressed on. “He was a farmer even at fifty years old, when he had worked in a cobbler’s shop for near thirty years. He would hold a piece of leather in his hands and bemoan that it was not wheat. He said even the ore or smelted metal itself could not be so precious a gold as that, and made fun of me that I could eat so little of it.”</p><p>Aimé was watching him, his legs spread out and resting on a footrest, and Jean-Pierre sat with his own limbs tangled up beneath him.</p><p>All of the gifts they had bought, which Aimé had insisted on paying for, rested on the bed upstairs, awaiting adjustment and then wrapping – they had bought nice things indeed for George, and when Aimé had asked if they should be buying more things for the others, he had taken a moment and sort of sat in shock when Jean-Pierre had reminded him that it was George’s first Christmas, and that spoiling him would raise no eyebrows at all.</p><p>“He played an instrument that was like a guitar or a lute – it had been his father’s, and they had made it themselves, with the strings made of catgut cured in the village, and when I learned to play the violin, later on, when Asmodeus insisted that it would be good for my surgeon’s ability, to learn to play. I hated it, at first, for so long, I hated it – the instrument was loud, and difficult to play, and I would cry with frustration when I pursued my practice, and tried to avoid the lessons that Asmodeus had organised for me. Jules would always make me go, and he would sit with me while I practiced – he would withhold kisses from me, if I said I had not done the practice I ought. He always made me take the education I was too lazy and stubborn and stupid to appreciate, when first it was offered me, and when I walked past people in the street who begged me help, he would take me by the hand and lead me back, and remind me that they were no different to us.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre gently set the kiwi back on the plate, and idly licked his fingers of the tangy juice that stuck to his skin, pressing his knees together.</p><p>“Children would follow him wen they saw him pass,” he whispered. “They knew him, where we lived, in our… We didn’t have arondissements then, not yet, but in our neighbourhood, they would recognise him, and they knew he carried little sweets in his apron and they would chase after him and tell him they had been pursuing their work and had been helping their mothers and fathers, and he would reward them, and he would ask for them to make deliveries for him, so that people would receive their shoes from the dirtiest little gamins with sweet, gap-toothed smiles and clean hands, for he would wipe their hands before he handed them the parcel.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre inhaled, closing his eyes for a moment, and he remembered the streets as they were then, dirty and crowded, the sound of shouting and laughing in the streets – there had been poverty, then, but it had gotten so much worse, as the years had passed by.</p><p>“He didn’t appreciate his mother,” said Jean-Pierre softly. “The work she did, at times – he would tear his clothes, and he would not think of the fact that it was Marguerite who would repair them for him, but when she was older, he was kinder with her. He treated her better. I do not think she ever held it against him, that he sometimes forgot her, or wanted to, but I did – I would scold him, and say that were she my mother, my world would revolve around her, and Marguerite once heard me and said, “But, Jean, I am your mother,” and I loved her more dearly in that moment than I ever had before.</p><p>“He never laid hands on another man, even in anger, and he would scold other men who professed to beat their children or their wives. He said that any man who would go to blows if he still had possession of his tongue was a fool who did not know the grace he was hiding in his mouth. He loved dogs, but he was frightened of birds – a sparrow once came into our apartment, and he was nearly in tears until Marguerite and I herded it out of doors. He loved to sing, but he could never remember the words, and he would substitute his own, and it made me laugh. He loved music, and well-fitting shoes, and beer, and bad jokes.”</p><p>“And you,” Aimé said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, he loved me. He said he had the right to love me as much as he pleased, because God had dropped me in the fields for him to harvest, a gift for His favourite child.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, and then tried to pull it back, tried to stop as though he oughtn’t laugh, but Jean-Pierre reached across to touch him, to touch his arms, his hands.</p><p>“Laugh,” Jean-Pierre said. “He would want to be remembered in joy.”</p><p>“He got sick, right?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“A cough or the flu,” Jean-Pierre murmured. “I’m not sure what it was that killed him – his fever had broken, and I thought that perhaps he would recover, but he was very weak and we did not have antibiotics at that time. He passed in his sleep, beside me. A peaceful death. Why do you ask?”</p><p>“Uh, what  you said, um, about George, earlier,” Aimé said quietly.</p><p>“That this is his first Christmas?”</p><p>“No, the other thing you said,” Aimé said, “when we were looking at uh, at clothes. You said that George has influences to choose from – Colm and Pádraic, me and you, Asmodeus, Bedelia. That, um. That you want to teach him now, all of you, that he doesn’t deserve not to have nice things or not to want nice things because he finds something hard that we all find easy. That this is the beginning of his life, that if you teach him this now, he’ll carry it with him centuries later.” Aimé spoke slowly, thoughtfully.</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt himself frown in concentration, peering at the other man. “I don’t think I said that much about it,” he said, and Aimé sniggered, rubbing the back of his neck.</p><p>“Well, I, uh. You said it kinda like throwaway, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot since you said it,” Aimé murmured. “Asmodeus told me off a few months ago, said that I kept forgetting that you and Colm Fell into poverty, when you Fell. That you don’t forget stuff like that. I only really thought about it like… about money before, I didn’t think about it like, uh. I don’t know. About it affecting how you think.”</p><p>“It seems to me that would be obvious,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“Yeah, well, you’re three hundred years old and learned theory while it was being written,” Aimé said. “You and I have different ideas of what’s obvious.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre hummed in amusement, picking up the kiwi he had set down and scraping the meat from the flesh with his teeth, chewing it thoughtfully.</p><p>“His mother was called Marguerite?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said. “But his father was called Jacques, not Luc. You remind me of him, sometimes. He was patient with me, even when I did not deserve it – especially then. Thank you.”</p><p>“Thank you? The fuck are you thanking me for?”</p><p>“Asking,” said Jean.</p><p>Aimé shifted in his seat, as though uncomfortable. “Tell me about the beefcake in your choir soc.”</p><p>“He had dick pics on his phone,” said Jean-Pierre. “Short, but very thick. It looks like it would hurt.”</p><p>“That a big part of the appeal?”</p><p>“Mmm.”</p><p>“And is it hotter for you if you go up to him and offer yourself up, or if I meet him, mention that you’re my boyfriend, and tell him I’ll let him and his friends fuck you?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre went quiet for a second, and he turned to look at Aimé. Aimé looked amused, his eyebrows raising, and he grinned, watching Jean’s face.</p><p>“I like that colour,” Aimé murmured. “Very pink. You didn’t think about that, did you?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook his head, biting the inside of his lip. “No, but I am— I am not averse.”</p><p>“Good,” said Aimé. Taking the dragon fruit before Jean-Pierre could pick it up, then dodged away when Jean tried to snatch it back, laughing.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0033"><h2>33. Familial Conflict</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>On the 14<sup>th</sup> of December, having completed his last exam of the year at twelve, Aimé had spent the majority of the day painting in his flat. All of the sofas and chairs had been pushed back against the very edges of the room, and he’d laid out his two folding tables that he used for Christmas fairs and shit like that in the middle, so that he had more spaces to put paintings.</p><p>He’d been painting mindlessly for the past few weeks, whenever he wasn’t revising, and his head still packed so full of half-memorised lines of philosophy text that he half-felt like there were words trickling out of his ears and staining his neck with black ink. Everything that was cured had an invoice attached, and Colm had offered to drive him around so that he didn’t have to hire couriers for the paintings going out in Dublin.</p><p>He’d had more orders than usual, although he hadn’t ended up setting up at any of the Christmas fairs or anything – on the 19<sup>th</sup>, he’d set up to sell small canvases at a booth at the witches’ Christmas Market, and in the meantime, it was the commissioned pieces.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had gotten onto him about starting more social media, but the stuff he already had was too much for him to keep on top of, really, although he liked the pressure that came on top of him at Christmas, where he had to paint <em>or else</em>.</p><p>At six o’clock, he got the text from Jean-Pierre that he was out of his last exam of the day (although he still had three more this week, and kept oscillating between not seeming stressed at all and looking ready to tear out both his own hair and Aimé’s as he poured over his textbooks), and he opened the windows to let in more air for the paintings to cure.</p><p>It occurred to him as he walked through the room, painting small symbols on his tabletops and wood surfaces, charging them with a flick of his wrist that was far smoother than it used to be, that it would never have occurred to him that there were enchantments to speed ventilation and airflow. It was obvious, sure, but he used to only think of his own enchantment in terms of off and on switches – make it hot, make it cold, lock it, unlock it.</p><p>He’d been reading a lot more books about enchantment recently, about more high level enchantment and the way it was applied and charged, where the work would be incredibly subtle and complex with only a few runes applied.</p><p>It didn’t even feel like a fan once all of his enchantments were charged, but more like he was stood in the middle of a current, feeling the shift of the air’s flow in the room around him.</p><p>It was drizzling as he cycled across town to the angels’ house, but as much as it was bitterly cold – his fingers were red and stiff where they gripped at the handlebars of his bike, although he managed to tear one hand away enough to give some cunt in a Mercedes the finger and tell him to go fuck himself when he bore into Aimé’s lane – it wasn’t too heavy, and most of the rain streaked down the back of his coat.</p><p>“I’m home!” he called as he stepped into the house, hanging up his coat and pulling his boots off. Hearing the familiar miaow from behind him, he left the door ajar for Peadar, and grinned when he heard Jean-Pierre call down from upstairs, “Coming!”</p><p>There was no answer from the other room, and he saw why as he stepped into the other room, seeing the silhouette of Colm out in the greenhouse.</p><p>“Oh, Peadar, what have you got for us?” said Jean-Pierre after his feet had come to the bottom of the stairs, and Aimé turned to look and felt himself go pale. Peadar, who had padded in through the doorway and was now sitting pretty with his head raised up, had a bird half his fucking size struggling slightly in his jaws. It was wine-brown and grey with a white breast that had been turned red.</p><p>“How kind of you, Peadar,” Jean-Pierre said as he reached down, and as Aimé watched, Peadar deposited the bird into Jean’s waiting hands, letting l’ange take it. “Aren’t you a good boy?”</p><p>“Jesus, Jean,” Aimé said, putting his hand over his mouth and looking with horror at the pigeon that still twitching in Jean-Pierre’s hands, its throat wet with red blood and one of its wings at a funny angle, looking broken. “The fuck is wrong with you, Peadar?”</p><p>Peadar looked up at him with his bloodied muzzle and his happy, stupid eyes, and chirruped a vague question, coming to wind his fat body around Aimé’s legs.</p><p>“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Jean-Pierre said chidingly to Aimé, walking past him and into the kitchen with the pigeon cupped in his hands. Peadar trailed after him, peering up at him to see what he was doing. “He’s a cat: cats catch birds.”</p><p>“Can you heal it?”</p><p>“It’s a pigeon, Aimé, with a broken wing and other bones broken, too – it would take some time for it to heal, and that’s assuming it caught no infection from Peadar’s bite.” For all he talked coldly, Jean-Pierre was holding the bird extremely gently, and the pigeon warbled as he held it over the sink.</p><p>Aimé swallowed. “But—"</p><p>The bird’s neck made a quiet crunch as Jean-Pierre deftly twisted its head, and Aimé closed his eyes, trying not to physically recoil. “I’m sorry,” Jean-Pierre said softly to him. “But it would be cruel to keep it alive, only to suffer as it healed.”</p><p>“I don’t know how you can fucking do that,” Aimé muttered. “Just— just kill something.”</p><p>“Death isn’t always the worst thing,” Jean-Pierre said, running the tap and washing his hands, rubbing cream-coloured soap into the red staining his fingers, so that pink water fell into the basin. “It is crueller at times to let a creature live than to let it die. Pigeons are hardy birds, but they only live three or four years, as a rule, and the shock might have killed it even if its injuries didn’t. Of the birds to select, though, Peadar has brought us a wood pigeon, which is far better than a feral one.”</p><p>“Better?” Aimé repeated, unable to tear his eyes away from the bird as it rested, dead, on a dry plate beside the sink.</p><p>“Of course,” Jean-Pierre said. “Much cleaner than the feral pigeons, and they don’t carry nearly so many diseases – although I expect it wasn’t so wily to young Peadar creeping up on it as a feral pigeon might have been.”</p><p>Aimé turned to look at Peadar, big and fat and purring contentedly on the arm of the chair: when Jean-Pierre loosely took him by the scruff of his neck he complained with a low mrow of noise, but he didn’t try and twist free too violently as Jean-Pierre daubed the blood from around his mouth.</p><p>“I’m sorry it upsets you,” Jean-Pierre said, and Aimé glanced up at his face, at the serious expression l’ange was wearing. “Predators kill, Aimé. It is in their nature.”</p><p>“You’re a predator,” said Aimé. “Right?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Jean-Pierre said, letting Peadar go, and he held his hand palm out as an apology: Peadar peered at him for a moment, but then forgave him, putting his head into Jean-Pierre’s hand and purring loudly. “I didn’t kill a man until some years after Jules died, you know. I don’t remember the riot precisely, but I was working as a doctor, and a gendarme went to beat a young man in with the butt of his rifle. It was a heavy carabine, and the boy must only have been fourteen at the eldest – he was stealing a sack of grain in the chaos. I didn’t even think about it, at the time – I broke his neck as I broke that pigeon’s, wrenched his head to the side until I heard the bones crack.”</p><p>Aimé watched Jean-Pierre’s face, which was lost in thought as he leaned against the arm of the chair, encouraging Peadar up and into his lap and cuddling the cat against his chest. Peadar was visibly delighted, shoving his forehead up against Jean-Pierre’s chin, although he was leaving orange hair all over his blouse.</p><p>“They were lonely years I spent in Paris,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “We had lived through the financial crisis, la guerre des farines, but it got worse not better the older Jules became, the more time passed. Twelve years, I think, I lived in Paris, I served as a doctor, a surgeon, and they knew me as widower, though I had had no wife, and I looked so young. I travelled, at times, with Asmodeus, here and there, and when came the uprising, I lingered. We tore everything down, we built everything anew, and…”</p><p>He sighed.</p><p>“I ran away, in the end. I killed people – I healed more. I set wounds, and I fed the people I could, and I learned to speak where others were speaking – and they listened to me because I’m beautiful, but that didn’t matter, because they listened. The first time they put me before a firing squad.</p><p>“I left, I went back to medical school, and I practised medicine for a time, not surgery anymore, but… I was caught, and it was mundies, they thought I had squirreled away from the execution due me. They caught me in Arras, imprisoned me, and I was to be guillotined, but Asmodeus came for me and said I had had time enough in France, that it was time to do good elsewhere. The 18<sup>th</sup> century had given way to the 19<sup>th</sup> by the time I met Colm.”</p><p>“You hadn’t met him before that?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“No,” Jean murmured. “And when I met him, I thought he was prick.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, reaching out and running his knuckles down Peadar’s back, pressing into the thickness of his fur. “You hated him?”</p><p>“No, no, but… But I was softer then, and he was harder. I had killed people, soldiers, but I was still nervous of it, and I would only ever kill in defence of others, not in defence of myself – Colm hated that. Every time someone lunged for me and I pushed away my attacker but did not put them down, he would shout for ages afterward. He would be incensed. But I had my troubles with him, also – he thought he understood the world because he took in everybody’s feelings, but it never occurred to him that there were feelings even he was not privy to, that there were notions his empathy did not extend to. And I thought he was too violent.”</p><p>“<em>You</em> thought <em>he</em> was too violent?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre smiled ruefully. When Aimé put one of his feet up on the arm beside Jean, Jean cupped his ankle in one gentle hand, the one not supporting Peadar against his chest. His thumb stroked an idle pattern against Aimé through his trousers.</p><p>“He fought people in bars, in pubs, in the street,” Jean-Pierre said. “He had a short temper – not like mine, it wasn’t so explosive, but it was… He was so protective of me, of Asmodeus, of himself. If someone said the wrong thing, that was one thing, but so often he threw the first punch at only the wrong thought. It is not that he was a stereotype – it was different, culturally, one could go to blows over an insult, but Colm responded to the insults people had not given voice to yet.”</p><p>Aimé tried to imagine that, a Colm who got <em>angry</em>, genuinely angry, instead of just grumpy and mildly irritable, who hit you for real instead of just cuffing you gently. It was difficult to envisage – but then, so was the idea of a Jean-Pierre scared to hurt you.</p><p>“People would see us, a Frenchman frightened to fight back even when someone went to punch him, and an Irishman who would fight you if you so much as glanced at him. We were cartoons to some people – Manolis used to say so, used to laugh. Manolis would think the most vicious things just to see the way it made Colm bristle, but I think that helped him measure himself – and with Manolis, I had to be vicious, I learned to be. Not just against him, but in the Revolution, against the Turks. And even after we left, after Manolis died and we moved onward, it was often together, Colm and I. We evened out, between Greece, Haiti, Vietnam. We mellowed each other, I think. Before that, neither of us had known companionship that would not soon leave us. It was not that we were joined at the hip – Colm and I through the years have spent years at a time away from each other, even before my imprisonment, but we were bound together, linked, even when we were apart.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre inhaled, like he hadn’t meant to say so much at once, and Aimé leaned forward, pulled Jean-Pierre toward him, so that their noses brushed against each other.</p><p>“You look like you guys Fall whole, already grown up,” Aimé murmured. “But you don’t, do you? You don’t have to be children to still need growth.”</p><p>“The man you will be in thirty years is not the man you are now,” Jean-Pierre replied. “We angels are not so special in that regard.”</p><p>The door opened, and Colm stepped inside, his boots left in the porch.</p><p>“Peadar brought us a gift, Colm,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Peadar?” Colm repeated, uncomprehending, but then he saw where Aimé was pointing, and hummed, taking the pigeon up from where it was laid on the plate and testing its weight in his palm. He didn’t hold it like Jean-Pierre had, tenderly even after it was dead: he held it like he held other ingredients, bounced it in his palm, passed it between his hands. “Well, tell him thanks. This is good.”</p><p>“How are you going to cook it?” Aimé asked. He tried to imagine it, but he’d never eaten pigeon before – did it just look like a little chicken, once it was done?</p><p>“I’ll roast it,” Colm said. “I’ll show you how, if you want – I’ll tie it up, roast it on some veg.”</p><p>Aimé swallowed, feeling a kind of uncertainty gather in the back of his throat, but he nodded his head. He was surprised by how willing he felt to try it, to learn, to taste a bird the fucking cat had dragged in.</p><p>“You want me to show you how to pluck it?” Colm asked, and Aimé put his hand over his mouth, turning his head to the side. He wasn’t as squeamish as he expected to be, but the thought of pulling feathers out of the dead bird <em>did</em> make him abruptly nauseous, and Jean-Pierre rubbed the back and the side of his neck.  </p><p><em>“Colm</em>,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“Sorry, sorry,” Colm said, putting the bird down. “I’ll do the prep, Aimé, don’t worry about it.” To his credit, when Aimé looked at him, he looked genuinely apologetic, and Aimé picked Peadar up, holding the big beast against his chest.</p><p>He’d never really known how to pick a cat up before meeting Peadar, but he’d observed Colm and Jean and De picking him up enough to have a handle on it: he supported his fluffy arse in the crook of his elbow and rested his thumb against Peadar’s chest, holding him steady under the armpit.</p><p>Peadar vibrated with his purrs, held in Aimé’s arms, and – although he specifically kissed him high enough to avoid the blood that lingered on his chin – Aimé brushed his lips against the top of the cat’s head.</p><p>“No more birds,” he told Peadar sternly.</p><p>Peadar looked at him with blank, uncomprehending eyes, and purred even louder.</p><p>“How the fuck does he even catch them?” he asked. “I’ve never even seen him run.”</p><p>“Some secrets aren’t for the likes of us,” said Colm mildly.</p><p>“Did the Agarwals’ cat catch it first?” Jean-Pierre asked, glancing to Colm, and Aimé felt his mouth drop open.</p><p>“Yeah,” Colm said, grinning. “It seems from his side of things like Snowman dropped it while he was walking along the fence and Peadar snatched it up. I expect he came over here so Snowman couldn’t take it back.”</p><p>“You bastard,” said Aimé, as seriously as he could, and Jean-Pierre laughed. “Why are you laughing? He’s taking credit for another man’s labour – he’s <em>literally</em> a fat cat, Jean!” He broke into laughter after managing to get this out, and the three of them all laughed for a moment.</p><p>“For once, I shall forgive a capitalist,” said Jean-Pierre indulgently, scratching Peadar’s ears. “But only because he has such handsome whiskers.”</p><p>Peadar fidgeted, demanding to be put down, and after Aimé set him on the floor, he went to wind around Colm’s ankles, looking up hopefully at him for food.</p><p>“Snowman Agarwal catch a lot of birds?”</p><p>“Lots of them,” Jean-Pierre said. “She belongs to their youngest daughter, Sushmita. Many complaints about her in the neighbourhood group online – rumour has it she made off with someone’s pet hamster.”</p><p>“Opened the cage and everything,” added Colm as he put a little tuna onto a dish for Peadar, and Aimé snorted.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>It was early in the evening, and it was incredibly warm in the kitchen. Aimé was stood at the chopping board, and he was watching very closely as Colm demonstrated how he held a knife, chopping vegetables quickly.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was asleep on the sofa under a blanket – Peadar had laid with him for a while, but had long-since toddled off home, and earlier Aimé had had to sit and withstand it as the two of them had an impassioned argument about what Christmas decorations they were going to buy.</p><p>Colm had initially said they weren’t going to have a tree, and that he hated the idea of Christmas trees, and then had revealed that he had already arranged to buy a live tree, and that when they were not using it, he would plant it on his land. They had then gotten into an impassioned argument about appropriate colour schemes – red and green versus red and gold – and when he had asked Aimé to weigh in, Aimé had gotten up to let the cat out.</p><p>It had been a relief, when Jean had nodded off and Colm had told Aimé to start cooking with him.</p><p>“You’ll be better off learning this directly from De once he’s home,” Colm said. “I learned from him, and he’s better at it than I am. He’s done proper culinary shit.”</p><p>“This is pretty culinary,” said Aimé, who had been trying to chop vegetables for a while before Colm had kept barking at him to get his thumbs out of the way of the knife, and then made Aimé watch what he was doing as he chopped them himself. Colm had washed the pigeon and stuffed it with herbs, but apparently they’d be roasting the vegetables on their own before they put the pigeon on top, because it barely took any time at all to roast. “What does it taste like?”</p><p>“The bird? Pigeon’s pretty gamey. I like it, but it’s a strong flavour.”</p><p>Colm’s phone started to ring on the counter, blasting out some folk song in Irish Aimé had never heard before, and Colm wiped off his hands, picking it up to answer. Woken up by Colm’s ringtone, Jean sleepily rose his head from where he’d been napping beside the fire, blinking confusedly at them.</p><p>Aimé expected the usual blunt, <em>“Colm anseo</em>,” but instead, Colm said, surprisingly warmly, “Haigh, a thaisce, an bhfuil gach ui—” A little of the colour drained out of his face, and suddenly he was speaking far more quickly, so quickly that Aimé could barely make out the individual words as Colm swept his apron off and jogged up the stairs.</p><p>“The fuck’s that about?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre pushed himself off the sofa, rubbing at one of his eyes and stifling a yawn against his wrist.</p><p>“That’s Heidemarie’s ringtone. Some sort of emergency, I expect.”</p><p>“You don’t seem worried,” Aimé said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre shrugged his shoulders. “Last she called she had sprained her wrist, and was calling to say she wouldn’t be texting for a while. He acted as though she were on her deathbed.”</p><p>He picked up Colm’s knife and went back to chopping the vegetables Colm had been working on, and Aimé returned to his own work in silence, until they had a tray full of parsnips, carrots, pumpkin, asparagus, and potato to set into the big dish to cook.</p><p>For all he didn’t eat meat, it was plain Jean-Pierre knew how to season the vegetables, because he sprinkled the salt and the spices over the vegetables with ease, and drizzled garlic oil over them too.</p><p>He nodded to Aimé to set the dish into the oven, and when Colm came back downstairs, he was speaking in English again: “Yeah, whenever you can, lad. Sure, sure, that’s grand, tonight’s grand. Yeah, I’ll pack a bag. Go raibh maith agat.”</p><p>“Pack a bag?” Jean-Pierre repeated coldly, and Aimé glanced at him, surprised by how angry he looked.</p><p>“I need to go to Berlin,” Colm said. “That was Charlie, he’s gonna book a flight for me.”</p><p>“So you will not be with us for Christmas, then?” Jean-Pierre asked. “You said you would go to her in the new year.”</p><p>“I’ll be back before Christmas,” Colm said, moving past Aimé and Jean-Pierre in the kitchen to rifle through the kitchen drawer for a passport. “I just need to go back to her right now.”</p><p>“Why, what’s wrong?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Her fucking kids,” Colm muttered. “Her daughter and his husband live in this fucking nice house, with an apartment they used to rent out to tourists. They got her to give them <em>her</em> fucking house back in ’03, said it was better for her to live close by, and then they rented it out for a while before selling it off. So now, Heidemarie has nowhere to go and they’re threatening to put her in a fucking home. Where are the <em>fucking</em> passports—”</p><p>“Next drawer up,” Aimé said when Jean-Pierre didn’t say anything, and Colm dragged open the next drawer, sweeping through Asmodeus’ neatly organised rows of passports and pulling out the right one. “Can they do that?”</p><p>“Her vision’s a little bad, it’s starting to go,” Colm muttered. “And her arthritis is pretty advanced, but she’s sharp as a fucking tack – her short term memory’s a little gone, but she hasn’t dementia, there’s no reason she should be institutionalised.”</p><p>“Perhaps if she were more pleasant to live with, they would not be so keen to send her elsewhere,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>It happened so quickly Aimé couldn’t have stopped it if he’d tried. He remembered it, afterward, as one extremely fast moment, all blurs of motion: Colm launched himself across the kitchen, and Aimé didn’t see his fist connect, but he heard Jean-Pierre’s cry of pain and the loud crack of his nose, and he saw the flash of light in Jean-Pierre’s eyes as he leaned heavily against the kitchen counter, blood dribbling through and over his fingers as he held his hand against his face.</p><p>Time slowed down for a few moments, as Aimé looked between Colm, his hands clenched at his sides, his shoulders drawn up, his chest rising and falling as he breathed in through his nose, his teeth gritted, and Jean-Pierre, whose eyes were alive with a sort of feral thirst for blood Aimé had been on the receiving end of.</p><p>Maybe it was his familiarity with the latter that let him grab Jean-Pierre’s wrist before he could launch himself at Colm with the kitchen knife that had found its way into his hand.</p><p>He fisted his hand in the front of Colm’s jumper and shoved him back to keep him from trying to grab at his brother, and Jean-Pierre he grabbed as hard as he dared by the hair, twisting his head back to keep him at too awkward an angle to lunge with the knife.</p><p>They were both talking rapidly and fighting against Aimé’s grip as he tried to keep them forced apart, Jean in French and Colm in Irish, and Aimé was shouting powerlessly over them, not that it made any difference.</p><p>“Calm down, calm down, fucking put the knife down, Jean, Colm, <em>Jesus fuck</em>, would you both—”</p><p>“Is this a bad time?” asked a smooth, sultry voice from the doorway, and both angels went abruptly quiet, turning to look at their brother.</p><p>Aimé had never been so grateful to see Asmodeus in all his life.</p><p>Leaving his trunk beside the door, Asmodeus walked easily forward, and he put pressure on the centre of Jean-Pierre’s palm: the knife clattered to the floor, and Asmodeus wrapped one arm around Jean-Pierre’s chest, pulling him back from Aimé and to the edge of the kitchen.</p><p>Aimé let Colm go with a shuddered exhalation of relief, and Colm shouldered past Aimé, didn’t even bother to say a word to De as stalked out of the kitchen and ran back up the stairs.</p><p>Aimé stood there, breathing heavily for a few moments and feeling his heart pound in his chest, and watched De turn Jean-Pierre around to look at him. Asmodeus was still in his jacket, his scarf still around his neck and his shoes still on, but he put on his reading glasses to look at Jean-Pierre’s face.</p><p>“Pinch then pain,” he warned as he put his hand on Jean-Pierre’s face, loosely gripping his nose, and Jean-Pierre didn’t pull away, but gripped Asmodeus’ wrists as Asmodeus cracked his nose back into place.</p><p>“He <em>punched</em> me—”</p><p>“Shht,” Asmodeus hissed, a whispered hushing noise so sharp that it made Jean flinch and go quiet, and De held up one finger, wet with Jean-Pierre’s blood as his green gaze bored into Jean’s. “Did you deserve it?”</p><p>“<em>No</em>, I—”</p><p>“Did he?” Asmodeus asked, turning to look at Aimé. “He said something cruel?”</p><p>“I guess,” Aimé mumbled.</p><p>“About Heidemarie?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Wash your face,” Asmodeus ordered Jean-Pierre crisply. “Now. Ah!” He grabbed Jean-Pierre by the back of the collar like a recalcitrant cat, and shoved him back into the kitchen where he’d been going toward the stairs. “Where I can see you, if you would, Jean.” Turning to Aimé as he wiped his own hands clean, he asked, “Alright?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “They didn’t hurt me – they were too busy trying to fucking kill each other.”</p><p>“They do that from time to time,” Asmodeus said, as though Jean-Pierre weren’t right next to them. “They do forgive each other. Don’t you, Jean?”</p><p>“Mm,” Jean-Pierre hummed, and went back to lie beside the fire, wrapping himself in his blanket and facing the sofa instead of them.</p><p>“You always come home to a welcome like this?” Aimé asked, and Asmodeus sighed, smiling distantly as he unwound his scarf from around his neck and slipped out of his coat, both of which Aimé took.</p><p>“Not as often as I feel like I sometimes remember, when I’m away from them,” Asmodeus said, “but far more often than I really would like.”</p><p>As Aimé hung up Asmodeus’ coat and his scarf, he looked at Asmodeus as he crouched down beside Jean-Pierre on the sofa, reaching to cup Jean-Pierre’s cheek.</p><p>“… <em>not fair</em>,” he caught Jean-Pierre say in a fierce whisper. “<em>He said he was going to be here with us—</em>”</p><p>“You should count yourself lucky, not needing to rely on Colm as Heidemarie must at her age,” Asmodeus told him, his voice resolute. “You think she likes having to call on her father like this?”</p><p>Aimé took hold of Asmodeus’ trunk, carrying it up the stairs and shouldering open Asmodeus’ bedroom door, lifting it up and setting it on top of the ottoman. When he went up the second flight of stairs, lingering in Colm’s doorway, he watched Colm rush back and forth, tossing stuff into his suitcase.</p><p>“Can I help?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“Don’t need you,” Colm said sharply.</p><p>“You wanna talk about it?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Uh, what do you need done in the yard and on the allotment, while you’re gone?”</p><p>Colm froze for a second, and then glanced away from his suitcase, met Aimé’s gaze, and after a few seconds’ hesitation, he stoutly nodded his head. “I’ll send you a list,” he said, and went back to packing.</p><p>Aimé didn’t say anything, didn’t push any further.</p><p>He just stood there, until Colm said, “I knew it would go this way eventually. As soon as Angela said she should transfer the ownership to their name, I knew this would happen. I said, Heidi, let them rent it out, live them, but it doesn’t need to be in their name, you can keep the deeds, but Angela and her cunt husband, Elias, they kept going on about taxes and shit.”</p><p>“Those are your grandkids,” Aimé reminded him.</p><p>“Fuck ‘em,” Colm said. “I like Gunther – I liked Dietmar and Henning better, but I like Gunther. Angela, she’s… She’s got this bad fucking habit of logicking her way out of the inconvenience of other people’s feelings. Who does that remind you of?”</p><p>“He doesn’t use logic,” said Aimé, and Colm huffed out a derisive sound. “What are you going to do? Argue with her kids?”</p><p>“I’m gonna go, see how she is, talk to her properly. See what she wants. De can help me buy a house in Berlin for her, but she, she shouldn’t live alone, she needs the help. Jean makes it out like she’s some kind of arsehole, but she fucking isn’t – she’s got a dark sense of humour, but it isn’t nasty, isn’t insulting. She just needs help to get around.”</p><p>“She’s lucky,” Aimé said lowly. “She still has you to look out for her.”</p><p>“Fuck off with your feelings, I don’t need them right now,” Colm said. “Thanks, Aimé, really, but I need—”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Aimé said. “Text me the list.”</p><p>An hour later, when Aimé was lying back in an armchair, Jean-Pierre resting on his lap, Colm came downstairs to put the pigeon in the oven. His flight wasn’t going until past midnight.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>He did not look up to say it – in fact, he didn’t even raise his head from Aimé’s chest, so that the sound came out muffled and thick.</p><p>“Me too,” was the gruff response.</p><p>Aimé glanced to Asmodeus, who had settled into the other chair, and was reading his newspaper that made Aimé’s brain hurt.</p><p>Relying on the fact that Colm couldn’t see his hands from his position, and that Jean-Pierre’s face was shoved into Aimé’s chest, Asmodeus signed, <em>Better than usual</em>.</p><p>
  <em>Serious?</em>
</p><p><em>Yes</em>.</p><p>“Is that dove?” Asmodeus asked.</p><p>Colm laughed. It was a slightly forced levity, but that he bothered to force it, Aimé thought, was a good sign.</p><p>“Why don’t you tell him, Jean?” Colm asked.</p><p>“Peadar brought us a sign of his affections,” Jean-Pierre said. His voice was quiet, muted, but it warmed as he went on.</p><p>When Asmodeus laughed, his brothers laughed with him, and Aimé laughed too.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0034"><h2>34. Pixie Lights</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>When Jean-Pierre came home the next day, having finally finished the last of his exams, neither Aimé nor Asmodeus were there to greet him home. The fire was built and ready, but not lit, and Jean-Pierre could see that Asmodeus had evidently unpacked his already impeccably wrapped gifts, because each of them was neatly stacked in the corner of the room, all of them wrapped up in pieces of coloured, patterned silk and ribbon that Jean-Pierre would take for his sewing pile, if no one wanted theirs.</p><p>He knew that Asmodeus always did the same thing, went to the haberdasher’s and picked out nice pieces of patterned silk that would do for lining or little cushions, and Jean-Pierre reached out and stroked his fingers over a black silk with white spots, and read the carefully appointed tag, which read in Asmodeus’ perfect handwriting, <em>To Bedelia, with love, from Asmodeus</em>.</p><p>Moving through the living room, he opened the fridge, and saw fruit already chopped ready for him, the plate enchanted instead of covered with clingfilm as Colm did, and although Jean-Pierre was aware it had likely been Asmodeus’ idea, he could see from the way the fruit was cut clumsily in places that it had been Aimé who had prepared it.</p><p>He didn’t like it when the house was empty.</p><p>It made him feel sick to his stomach and very alone, as though the house were hollow and he were hollow also, and when he looked to the kitchen window and saw that Asmodeus was outside, sitting back in a chair and reading his book, as Aimé worked in the greenhouse, a desperate relief flooded through him.</p><p>Keeping his coat on, although he resented having to go outside at all, Jean-Pierre stepped through the porch and into the garden, and Asmodeus reached back for him, taking his hand in his own as soon as Jean-Pierre put his hand out. Asmodeus’ skin was warm, and he wrapped his fingers gently around Jean’s, squeezing slightly.</p><p>“There’s a meal for you in the fridge,” Asmodeus said lightly.</p><p>“I saw,” said Jean-Pierre. “Thank you. I thought you weren’t here.”</p><p>“We went to the allotment already today,” Asmodeus said, marking his page and setting his book down on the patio table, stroking his thumb over the back of Jean-Pierre’s hand as he tugged his reading glasses down his nose and looked up at Jean-Pierre’s face. “Colm texted Aimé a list of everything he needed done – I didn’t realise how much Colm had diversified his crop. He didn’t do anything nearly so complex in Texas.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre looked out at Aimé, who had his headphones in, and was bobbing his head as he misted the plants in the greenhouse, lost in the focus of his task. Aimé liked outside labour, although Jean-Pierre imagined he preferred the warm air of a French vineyard to today’s wet freeze, and although he disliked Colm asking Aimé to do his work for him, when by all rights Aimé’s time was <em>Jean-Pierre’s</em> to requisition, if not his own, it pleased him that Aimé should be satisfied.</p><p>“He was somewhat nervous of the cellar crop,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt himself frown slightly. “The cannabis?”</p><p>“The cannabis,” Asmodeus said, “but the cacti, too, and he didn’t know what to do with Colm’s mushrooms, either, the ones in his bedroom or the ones he’s been growing on his land. But he learns quickly, as you know.”</p><p>“Is Colm in Berlin?” Jean-Pierre asked tightly. He felt <em>tired</em>, but not tired enough that he might go to bed, and his stomach gave an uncomfortable growl that might have been hunger or anxiety.</p><p>“He touched down early this morning,” Asmodeus answered, with a neat nod of his head. “He’s staying with Gunther and his wife – by all accounts, Gunther isn’t very pleased with his sister’s actions either, but he doesn’t have the money to step in, and nor do they have the space to invite Heidemarie to live with them. It’s not only an issue of money, of course – Heidi has savings, she has her own money, she could no doubt rent somewhere decent enough for herself, but she’d need to hire assistance, a carer, or have Gunther or one of the grandchildren visit every day, and Heidi’s incredibly like Colm. She doesn’t like to ask for help if she can avoid it.”</p><p>“She called Colm.”</p><p>“That’s different, he’s her daddy. You know this.” There was a sternness in Asmodeus’ tone, a sort of commanding hardness, and Jean-Pierre dragged his hand out of Asmodeus’ grip, crossing his arms over his chest and folding his hands under his armpits so that they weren’t quite so cold.</p><p>His chest felt twisted and hot, and he grit his teeth together, crossing his arms more tightly across his chest, but something in him softened when Aimé, dressed in jeans and a jacket that today were stained with mud as well as paint, stepped out of the greenhouse, saw Jean-Pierre, and smiled.</p><p>“Hi, ange,” Aimé said, wiping his hands off as he stepped closer. “How were your exams?”</p><p>“Good,” Jean-Pierre said shortly.</p><p>Aimé raised his eyebrows. “What’s with the sourpuss?”</p><p>“Yes, Jean,” Asmodeus said pointedly, leaning back in his seat and folding his hands over his belly as he looked up at him, his eyebrows raising. “What’s wrong?” Asmodeus’ tone was entirely innocent, but Jean-Pierre could hear the trace of mockery in it, and it didn’t matter that De was only teasing.</p><p>“We don’t have a Christmas tree,” Jean-Pierre said sharply. “Colm was going to get one from his friend and he hasn’t and now he’s in Berlin and we don’t have one, and Christmas is going to be <em>ruined</em> because we’ll just have to go without!” It all rushed out of him at once, more loudly than he meant for it to, and Aimé leaned back in surprise, but almost immediately afterward, he reached for Jean-Pierre, touching one hand against the side of his shoulder.</p><p>“Okay,” Aimé said soothingly. “Well, Colm said he was going to get one, right, that he’d already organised to get one? Where from?”</p><p>“<em>I don’t know</em>,” Jean-Pierre snapped, hearing the crack in his voice and hating himself for it, his skin feeling incredibly hot under his clothes, his hands clenched almost into fists, his fingernails digging crescents into his palms. “He just said he had organised to get one, but he’s done this on purpose, just abandoned it because he never wants a tree in the first place—”</p><p>“Now, that’s not true, is it?” Aimé asked. “Because he said he’d organised to get one, and you <em>know</em> it’s not on purpose, Jean, but—”</p><p>“He’s done it on purpose,” Jean-Pierre said, more loudly this time, so loudly his ears hurt.</p><p>“Jean,” Aimé said, as though Jean-Pierre were being unreasonable, and he knew he was being unreasonable, he <em>knew</em> it, but he couldn’t stop, could feel his blood boiling in his veins and threatening to tip over, threatening to well up within him and make him burst. “Jean, how many decades did you go before they were a thing without having a Christmas tree at all?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s answering sob caught him by surprise himself, and Aimé crumpled immediately, looking at Jean-Pierre in absolute horror.</p><p>“Oh, Jean, sweetheart, come—”</p><p>“Jean,” Asmodeus said as he stood to his feet, and he grasped Jean-Pierre by the shoulders and dragged Jean-Pierre to face him. Jean-Pierre looked down at the grass, knowing he was going to be scolded, but Asmodeus pressed his fingers up underneath Jean-Pierre’s chin and forced his gaze up even as Jean-Pierre tried to keep himself from crying. “It’s alright,” Asmodeus murmured, dragging his thumb over the wet corner of one of Jean-Pierre’s eyes. “We’re going to text Colm and ask where he’s getting the tree from.”</p><p>“But—”</p><p>“And if he doesn’t answer,” Asmodeus said smoothly, “we’ll pick up an artificial tree. And we’ll only have it until the 19<sup>th</sup> when Colm comes back, and it will be a placeholder.”</p><p>“But—”</p><p>“And if all the nice ones are sold, we’ll get a smaller one.”</p><p>“<em>But</em>—”</p><p>“And if we can’t get a tree at all, we’ll all have Christmas at Pádraic and Bedelia’s.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre bit the inside of his lower lip, looking at Asmodeus’ distantly understanding expression, and then he nodded, although he couldn’t stop crying, and Asmodeus took a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, wiping his face.</p><p>“Calm?” Asmodeus asked softly. “The world isn’t ending?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook his head.</p><p>“Good,” Asmodeus murmured. “Eat something, Jean, that you’re hungry is making you more upset.” He gently cupped the side of Jean-Pierre’s cheek, and tapped his thumb against the bone. “Aimé and I have a quick errand to run and then we can all sit down together, if you’d like to watch something.”</p><p>“You’re going out?” Jean-Pierre asked, looking between the two of them. “But I just got home—”</p><p>“Just a few minutes,” Asmodeus said briskly, drawing away from him, and Jean-Pierre’s stomach did an anxious flip.</p><p>“Aimé—” Jean-Pierre said imploringly, and Aimé hesitated, his mouth half-open, but Asmodeus clucked his tongue.</p><p>“I need Aimé’s hands,” Asmodeus said shortly, leading the way into the house. “We’ll be quick, Jean.”</p><p>“I can come—”</p><p>“Eat,” Asmodeus called over his shoulder, and Jean-Pierre looked desperately to Aimé, who was looking between the two of them with anxiety writ on his ugly features.</p><p>“We’ll be quick,” Aimé repeated, glancing after Asmodeus, and he brushed his lips quickly over Jean-Pierre’s before rushing after Asmodeus.</p><p>Jean-Pierre wrapped his coat more tightly around himself, and picked up Asmodeus’ book, taking it and himself inside. Miserably, he opened the fridge to pick out his plate, but as the door shut behind Asmodeus and Aimé, he heard a familiar “mrow” of greeting, and looked to Peadar as he toddled in, his thick tail straight up in the air.</p><p>“Hello, Peadar,” Jean-Pierre said, unable not to smile despite his tear-sticky cheeks, and when he sank onto the sofa beside the fire, which Aimé had evidently lit for him on the way out, Peadar hopped up to sit beside him.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“What do you need me for?” Aimé asked as he pulled the seatbelt across his chest, leaning back in the seat as Asmodeus fiddled with the car seat, adjusting it for a man of his height instead of Colm’s much lower one. “Where are we going?”</p><p>“Oh, to get the Christmas tree,” Asmodeus said. “I meant to get it before Jean came home, but you were enjoying yourself, taking your time in the greenhouse, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”</p><p>Aimé turned to stare at him. “The Christmas tree?” he repeated.</p><p>“Yes, Colm’s getting it from a fae couple who grow them – they grow a wide variety of them, actually, including singing pines, and they also sell boxes of pixies. One has to feed them, of course, but they’re remarkably good for the garden, and I thought—”</p><p>“Shut the fuck up about the garden,” Aimé said sharply, cutting through the bullshit before Asmodeus could keep talking. “Explain what you <em>just</em> did. We just left your brother, <em>crying</em>—”</p><p>“My brother is fine,” Asmodeus said crisply, as he adjusted the rear view mirror, and gave Aimé a serious look over his glasses. “He wasn’t upset about the tree – he’s upset because Colm has gone to Berlin unexpectedly, because he’s tired, and because he hasn’t eaten for a great many hours, because he was always anxious and forgets to eat when he has exams.”</p><p>“So?” Aimé asked. “If you’d just said about the tree—”</p><p>Asmodeus shook his head as he reversed the car onto the road. “If I had told him the tree was sorted out, he would have felt unfairly scrutinised, like I was trying to discount his feelings, and then he would have pivoted to something else – he’d say he was upset that I had let him worry about the tree, or that you were concentrating on the garden instead of him. For now, he’s eating something, he has Peadar to keep him company, and the tree will be a nice surprise.”</p><p>Asmodeus was an exceedingly precise driver. Where Colm was a ridiculously good driver, did a lot of stuff easily, could take the car through surprisingly narrow gaps and could even reverse and slalom through things at speed, Asmodeus did things with a sort of frightening accuracy, all of his turns occurring at perfect angles, his stopping distances all textbook-correct.</p><p>“It isn’t that you shouldn’t comfort my brother when he’s upset,” Asmodeus said evenly. “But there are times when he needs to cry or let out his anger or, in your case, fuck it out, and then there are times when it needs to be neatly nipped in the bud before he can spiral further. He’ll be alright once we’re back, even before he sees the tree. He’s anxious about being on his own, but he’ll be complaining about all the people in his house within the week, I bet. He’s tender at the moment.”</p><p>“’Cause of Heidemarie?”</p><p>“Jean-Pierre doesn’t like the idea that someone might matter to myself or to Colm more than he does,” Asmodeus said, and Aimé leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest and looking out at the road. “He’s jealous – he’s possessive. This doesn’t extend only to yourself.”</p><p>“She’s his <em>daughter</em>.”</p><p>“That doesn’t matter,” Asmodeus murmured, with a rueful smile, but the smile faded from his face then, and he exhaled. “Don’t mention to this to Jean, but it is possible than in the new year, Colm will make the move to Germany, or that Heidemarie will come to Ireland.”</p><p>“She shouldn’t have to be in a home if she doesn’t want to,” Aimé murmured. He tried to imagine Mémé, old enough to need that kind of help all the time, and being forced into a home, and the idea made him stick to his stomach. “Did they seriously do that on purpose? Get her house so they could force her into a home?”</p><p>“I doubt that was their train of thought,” Asmodeus said softly. “At the time, I expect what concerned them was that she was an old woman alone in a fairly big house, three bedrooms, two storeys. They checked in on her fairly often, of course, but once her arthritis began to get worse and she was considering a motorised chair to help her up and down the stairs, and she needed to have the bathroom refitted, and so on. And it’s fair worse now, far more advanced. They were worried that she’d slip and hurt herself, or fall down the stairs, and she was worried about that too. Whereas living with her daughter, she could still have her own space, but without any unnecessary stairs, and she could be close to them. And if they were going to take the old house, they might as well rent it out – and it would be easier tax-wise to have the house in their name.”</p><p>“Bullshit,” muttered Aimé.</p><p>He thought about the young woman beaming out of Colm’s photos, often with a knife or a wrench in her hands, oil streaked on her face, and invariably with a much smaller, mousy man beside her, looking at her with visible adoration in his eyes. That had been her type, Colm had said. She’d gotten married to her first husband while wearing dungarees.</p><p>“Yes, Colm said so at the time,” Asmodeus murmured. “She did resist at first, but they rather badgered about it over the course of a few months, I think. And now… Gunther and his wife, Frances, they genuinely don’t have the time. They’re in their late fifties and they work full time even now, and I don’t know about any of her grandchildren. Quite a few of them live abroad, or are still in university, or they work fulltime themselves, you know. Colm asked me if I could loan him some money, one way or the other.”</p><p>“Loan him?” Aimé repeated. “He’s got a lot of his own money, doesn’t he?”</p><p>“Mmm, but not his own bank accounts. He pays for everything in cash, and does a lot of things under the table if he can, but he’d want to have a proper bungalow for them, and other things, too. There’s a reason that I typically set up the house for them and purchase the land they want. Colm hates all the paperwork and bureaucracy, and Jean-Pierre is perfectly capable of doing it himself, but…” Asmodeus sighed. “How do I put this nicely?”</p><p>“He picks the house just for him?”</p><p>“Oh, no, it isn’t that,” Asmodeus said. “When he’s working, he isn’t home all that much – no, Jean-Pierre very much does see the house as Colm’s domain. But <em>Colm</em> gets annoyed with him – he’ll berate Jean-Pierre for making the wrong choice, the wrong area, the wrong sort of house, or paying too much, or not knowing enough about the house, and then Jean-Pierre gets upset because he tried his best and Colm is being ungrateful, and then they start breaking each other’s bones.” Asmodeus said all this in such long-suffering tones that Aimé couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s easier if I do it.”</p><p>“I bet,” Aimé murmured. “I didn’t realise they could fight like that. Scared the shit out of me last night – I’ve seen Jean go crazy like that, but I’ve never seen Colm match him for it.”</p><p>“All brothers fight,” Asmodeus said. “Unfortunately, mine can do a great deal more non-lethal damage to one another than human brothers do to theirs. And Jean-Pierre makes up for being more fragile by being twice as vicious.”</p><p>“He said they weren’t always like that,” Aimé murmured, thinking of the way Jean-Pierre had talked last night, holding Peadar to him. “That Colm used to be way angrier, and Jean used to pussy out of fights.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t phrase it precisely like that,” said Asmodeus, with a low, resonant chuckle. “But yes, they used to be quite different. Jean-Pierre was never meek, but he used to run out of options once he found his opponent couldn’t be soothed with words or sex. When he learned how to wield a knife, he became something of a force to be reckoned with.”</p><p>Aimé was quiet for a second or two, one part of that catching in his mind, turning over and over again, and he drummed his fingers against the top of his knee. He opened his mouth, but then he hesitated, looking to Asmodeus’ face, which was as neutral and unrevealing as he ever was.</p><p>“Colm calls him a slut a lot,” said Aimé. “Jean.”</p><p>“We’re all sluts in Colm’s eyes,” Asmodeus said, with a shrug of his shoulders, and although there was nothing revealed in his face, no hesitation in his voice, Aimé could hear the hidden catch.</p><p>“Not like Jean is,” Aimé said.</p><p>Asmodeus’ nostrils flared as he inhaled, but it was a subtle movement, something that Aimé probably wouldn’t have noticed, if not for the fact they were sat right next to each other.</p><p>“And Jean said Myrddin raped him. When he was in prison.”</p><p>They stopped at a traffic light, and Asmodeus glanced at him, his eyebrows furrowing just slightly. “He called it that?” he asked.</p><p>“No,” Aimé said, although the distinction made something pull and catch in the base of his gut. “No, I did. He just said Myrddin fucked him.”</p><p>“Hm,” Asmodeus hummed as he watched the light change to amber. His hands were on the wheel at a perfect ten and two – Colm changed his hands position a lot, but usually kept his at the lower half of the wheel instead of the top half.</p><p>“He uses sex,” Aimé said. “To get— get what he wants. Right?”</p><p>“Right,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“But— so before he knew how to fight, he’d just…?”</p><p>“Sex has always been a useful currency, in Jean-Pierre’s eyes,” Asmodeus said musingly, but there was an edge of concern in his voice, Aimé thought. “He enjoys having sex, of course, but I think, for him, there’s almost something more appealing in being desired than being had – and he very much enjoys when someone desires him and dislikes that they do.”</p><p>Aimé thought of the mostly-straight guy in Jean-Pierre’s choral society, and felt abruptly uncomfortable, dragging his thumb loosely over his lower lip, scratching at the chapped skin there – it wasn’t as chapped as it had used to be, although whether it was from kissing Jean’s glossed lips or just that he was eating and drinking better these days, he didn’t know.</p><p>“He isn’t a baby, Aimé,” Asmodeus said. “He doesn’t need you to decide for him what sex is healthy and what isn’t – he makes his own choices.”</p><p>“Isn’t that a shitty thing to do?” Aimé asked. “Take advantage of him being traumatised?”</p><p>“Jean-Pierre was free with his body long before any trauma he experienced,” Asmodeus said bluntly. “With Jules, with other men, even a few women, when he was still working out what it was he liked. And if you would forgive me for stating the obvious, Aimé, we’re all traumatised in our house. If you make a habit of avoiding anything that might be connected to our trauma, you’ll not be able to walk from one room to the next.”</p><p>“All of us?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“All of us.”</p><p>“What kind of trauma are <em>you</em> carrying around? Got fondled by a priest?”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed. It was a deeply exciting but chilling sound, one that made Aimé shudder as he felt it rumble uncomfortably in his own rib cage, like a heavy bass at a rave. “Not exactly,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“You seem well-adjusted compared to the rest of us.”</p><p>“Do I? Very kind of you to say.”</p><p>For a little while, they drove in silence.</p><p>“Would he freak out? If <em>I</em> was possessive?”</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said. “But if you were, I expect he’d fuck other people to spite you. My brother both craves and resents that other people might control him – Manolis used to be incredibly possessive, would be furious when people flirted with Jean-Pierre even if Jean started it, even if it were Jean flirting just to access something, or to distract. But Jean-Pierre only escalated – he’d make sure Manolis caught him mid-kiss, mid-seduction, mid-fuck. And Manolis was hot tempered and a little dim – he never learned that Jean was only provoking him for the reaction he got.”</p><p>“The others?”</p><p>“Benoit didn’t mind,” Asmodeus said. “He was a very gentle man – he was easy-going, and it didn’t bother him one way or the other what Jean did. He had a very liberal view of relationships that didn’t really include monogamy – he thought to be jealous would be to encroach on Jean-Pierre’s liberty. I think it frustrated Jean a little bit, truth be told, that Benoit so respected him, at times.” This was said with a rueful smile and a huff of laughter. “Bui would be catty, sarcastic, but I think a part of him was excited by it, too. He wasn’t a passionate cuckold so much as a glutton for punishment. Farhad never knew that Jean slept with other people, or if he did, he never let on. With Rupert, he… Well. He didn’t sleep with other men, those years – he was a little frightened to be alone in a room with unfamiliar people for a while.”</p><p>“And Jules?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Oh, Jules,” Asmodeus said softly. “He liked to encourage Jean to try new things, to broaden his horizons, and after one threesome, Jean-Pierre wanted a few thousand more. They explored a lot, in those times – I remember the first time Jean-Pierre told me about it, with a sort of… Brilliant innocence. “Two at once, Asmodeus, can you imagine it?” he asked me. Different indeed to the version of my brother you witnessed at Doros’ orgy this Halloween.”</p><p>“Colm told you about that?”</p><p>“Doros did,” Asmodeus said. “Our paths crossed some weeks before I saw you in Grenoble.”</p><p>“You know every angel on earth?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“How many are there?”</p><p>“Twenty-three thousand, eight hundred and thirty six,” answered Asmodeus, without hesitation. “They used to fall less regularly, but these days we typically see two to four falls per year. This year, four. Next year, two. Six-hundred and seventeen angels have died, since the Great Fall.”</p><p>“And you just… you go around and pick them up and help them fill out their new birth certificates?”</p><p>“Ideally,” Asmodeus said. “Not every angel adjusts to their Fall as well as George did – as well as Colm and Jean and Benedictine did. Winged angels typically have it easiest, actually, although don’t say that to Jean-Pierre, because he’ll be unbearable about it.” Asmodeus spoke softly, thoughtfully, and although his face was as blank as ever, his voice was quiet and had a lot of feeling in it. Tenderness, Aimé thought. “But when Raphael Fell he couldn’t contain his cleansing fire – he didn’t just smoke but burned, was a walking pyre. I couldn’t get there in time – he burned out his eyes. Other angels have Fallen and not fit into their skins, have burst out of them, have been consumed with agony and not known how to set themselves right; others have Fallen into crowds and like Jean-Pierre at times, have been so overwhelmed by the power of the feelings and emotions of those around them that they have all but come undone. Many angels command or channel some form of magic, but when first they Fall are overfull with it – they crackle and hum like livewires, or drown in the water they would conjure.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Aimé said, not knowing what else to say.</p><p>“Birth, for humans, is an exceedingly messy ordeal,” Asmodeus said softly. “But they don’t remember it. Angels remember their Falls, and creatures whose first recollection is agony expect more agony. I wouldn’t have that for my siblings, so much as it could be avoided. The Fall is pain enough.”</p><p>Once more, it wasn’t so much as a falter in what Asmodeus had said, or any kind of emotional reveal, but just the absence of something.</p><p>“Did it hurt for you?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“I think that it will,” said Asmodeus. “This is the place.”</p><p>The air thrummed with magic, smelled sweetly of pine even though the windows were closed, and as they looked out over the rows of pine trees potted ready to go, Aimé saw the soft glows of pixies as they flowed freely through the air, like coloured balls of light.</p><p>“Aren’t they— sentient? Pixies?”</p><p>“Oh, yes,” said Asmodeus. “Although they have their own language – I think it might be pitched a little too high for your ears. Like mouse squeaks.”</p><p>“So you’re saying we should buy a jar of sentient little people as Christmas decorations?” Aimé asked, and Asmodeus huffed out a laugh.</p><p>“With how magical households are scattered amongst mundie ones these days, rather than being concentrated in communities, it’s often a useful way to self-propagate,” Asmodeus explained. “If they come to a household and don’t like it, they just leave. They usually have a contract with the fae selling them to check on them a certain amount of time after their sale, to ensure they aren’t unduly trapped or constrained in their buyer’s home, to ensure they’re satisfied with the arrangement. They’re tremendous pollinators, which is why I suggested them, but people often buy them for their children – they create lovely lights shows, and so long as food is available, they take very little active care. They’re often quite happy to pass themselves off as pets – it means a good deal of free, unconstrained territory away from other pixies and small fae, a regular food source, even free entertainment.”</p><p>“That’s fucking weird,” said Aimé. “Why do fae always do shit like this?”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed, and patted his shoulder. “When humans remark to me the inscrutability of fae cultures, it is ever my instinct to remind them of the reverse. Come on. I’ll heft the tree onto the car – you pin it to the roof rack. The ties are in the boot.”</p><p>“Gotcha,” said Aimé, and got out of the car.</p><p>As Asmodeus was paying the woman, Aimé put out his hand, and one of the Bokeh balls of colour landed on the tips of his fingers. He had to lean in and squint a little to see properly – apparently, pixies had a sort of field of magic around them to make themselves impossible for mundies to see clearly, but if you used magic you could concentrate and see past it – but he saw a little person with two legs, four arms, and a softly furred body, but it looked less like hair and more like the texture of moss. Its wings didn’t look like an insect’s wings – they looked crystalline, almost like quartz, and spread away from its body like dragonfly wings.</p><p>It was a uniform colour, a kind of blueberry shade.</p><p>Just like Aimé was looking down at it, inspecting it with interest, it was peering up at him, its many eyes shining in the light.</p><p>“I like your wings,” Aimé said experimentally. “They’re a nice colour.”</p><p>It was impossible to judge the change in the pixie’s expression, although Aimé was fairly certain it did change – he saw its mouth move, but even straining his ears, he couldn’t hear a thing coming off it.</p><p>It flew off, and Aimé turned to Asmodeus. “I couldn’t hear it,” he said. “But somehow, I feel like it called me a homo.”</p><p>“You’re not far off,” Asmodeus said. “But I don’t know what else you expected. Let’s go home.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>When Jean-Pierre woke up, it was slowly, to the feeling of Aimé’s fingers stroking through his hair, and the quiet rumble of Peadar purring on his chest. His eyes opened slowly, and he looked up at Aimé’s indulgent smile as he sat on the side of the sofa.</p><p>“Hi, baby,” Aimé said. “Feeling better?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt a guilty twinge, and he bit the inside of his lip, but nodded his head even as he sank his hand into Peadar’s thick fur, idly scratching between his shoulder blades. Peadar raised his chin, purring louder and smiling, his eyes closed.</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “I’m sorry for being so upset earlier. I think Asmodeus was right – I was hungry, and tired.” He had slept for an hour or so on the sofa, he thought, with Peadar on top of him, and he felt far better than he had earlier – but for the lingering embarrassment.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Aimé said, shrugging his shoulders. “I just don’t like seeing you cry. We brought you something back, though.”</p><p>“Strawberries?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“Uh, no,” Aimé said. “Do you need some?”</p><p>“I finished the ones we had.”</p><p>“Oh,” Aimé said. “Well I can go to the shop and—”</p><p>“Not <em>now</em>, Aimé,” said Asmodeus, and Jean-Pierre looked past Aimé, and gasped in delight.</p><p>The Christmas tree was nearly seven feet tall, its tip almost brushing the very top of the ceiling, and it had wonderful, wide branches and a heavy, black pot. It was incredibly verdant and green, and now that he was paying attention, Jean-Pierre could smell its fragrant aroma.</p><p>“I’ve enchanted the tree blanket,” Asmodeus said. “So that it collects the needles properly and stops them going into the rest of the carpet. We’ll buy decorations tomorrow.”</p><p>“Can we get pixies?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>Aimé stared at him.</p><p>“What?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Come on, Peadar,” said Aimé, heaving the weight off of Jean-Pierre’s chest and carrying him, purring up a storm, into the kitchen. “We’re better than the likes of these two.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre furrowed his brow, looking up at Asmodeus as he pulled himself to sit up, and Asmodeus reached for him, stroked a thumb over his cheek.</p><p>“Better?” Asmodeus asked softly.</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said softly. “I’m sorry for earlier.”</p><p>“You needn’t be sorry,” Asmodeus said. “Aimé and I understand. Why don’t you pick something for us to watch?”</p><p>“Are you going to watch it,” asked Jean-Pierre, “or just read your book while Aimé and I watch it?”</p><p>“I’ll listen to some of the dialogue,” Asmodeus promised. “Will that do?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, and reluctantly nodded his head, turning to look at Aimé, who was rocking Peadar in his arms and crooning a vaguely worded lullaby. Peadar, baffled but not displeased by this behaviour, was purring intermittently and allowing himself to be danced around.</p><p>Although a part of him was still anxious about Colm’s absence, Jean-Pierre felt full to the brim with warm affection, and allowed himself to relax back in his seat.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0035"><h2>35. A New Family</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre enjoyed decorating for Christmas.</p><p>Beyond a decorative wreath and perhaps some candles, they would never really decorate for St Nicholas’ day, and it was not as though he were a monarchist simply because he agreed to bring a tree into the house, because people had done it long before the British Victoria’s inclination, no matter that Colm grumbled about it.</p><p>He enjoyed the ritual of a tree’s decoration, and he enjoyed how festive it made the house feel, to have everything decorated with garlands and have the tree shining and beautiful.</p><p>It was late in the morning, and Aimé would be back from working Colm’s allotment soon, having already done the necessary work in the yard, and he had painting work to be done, too.</p><p>Perhaps it ought have bothered him, that Aimé was not there to assist with the decoration, but Colm wasn’t either, and although Asmodeus was sitting beside the fire, writing letters on the wooden clipboard he often kept on his knee for purposes like this.</p><p>It was often for Jean-Pierre, he knew.</p><p>He had a handsome desk in his bedroom, one that he liked. It was an impressive piece of carpentry, could expand to have a sloping surface like an architect’s work surface if he didn’t wish to sketch upon a flat one, and it had a great many spaces for storage, was enchanted so that glasses and ink pots never fell over, even when knocked.</p><p>Not that Asmodeus ever knocked anything over. He was far too graceful for that.</p><p>“Are you writing Mr MacKinnon?” Jean-Pierre asked as he stood back from the tree, looking at it critically to ensure that the garland of tinsel was symmetrically banded about its branches before picking up the next.</p><p>“No,” said Asmodeus. “I’m replying to an angel named Ignatius recommending texts for his university studies.”</p><p>“Ignatius Olsen? Or Ignatius Laguerre-Georges?”</p><p>“Mwangi.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Jean-Pierre, disappointed, and stepped around the tree to pull more tinsel into place. “I don’t know him.”</p><p>Asmodeus chuckled. “He’s studying economics, so I expect you wouldn’t want to.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre huffed out a sound and pulled the step ladder closer, taking up to the steps to put the last garland into place. He needed the steps in order to string the lights on and put the star on top of the tree – Jean-Pierre only hoped Colm wouldn’t notice once he was back and replace it with the terrifying tree-topper angel he found very humorous with its tatty fairy wings – because the tree was tall enough to brush the ceiling, and even as tall as Jean-Pierre was, he couldn’t reach without straining on his very tip toes.</p><p>And Asmodeus wouldn’t help – he never wished anyone a happy Christmas, and while he participated in gift giving and general festivities, neither would be participate in singing carols or decorating. He didn’t celebrate the holiday, truly, and only came for their benefit.</p><p>“Did you meet with him?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Meet with whom?”</p><p>“MacKinnon.”</p><p>“Mm,” Asmodeus hummed, singing the page with a neat flourish of his wrist and blotting his page, folding it into three perfect sections and sliding it into an envelope. He had some sort of mailing service, Jean-Pierre knew, but he only answered letters from certain people while he was travelling – from Jean-Pierre or Colm, if they wrote, but neither of them liked to bother him if it wasn’t an emergency, from MacKinnon, from the Embassy – and even then, he would often go weeks or months between checking the box. “For a few days.”</p><p>“He is well, I take it?” Jean-Pierre asked. He tried his best to keep his voice mild, not allowing any stiffness or jealousy to work its way into his voice, although as he always did when considering the strange enchanter to whom Asmodeus regularly returned in Nottingham, he ached to ask what it was that made him <em>quite</em> so appealing that he should like him better than Jean-Pierre and Colm, at times.</p><p>But—</p><p>But he was not unkind to Jean-Pierre, and he would buy paintings of Jean-Pierre and Rupert, when he came across them, and instead of selling them in his shop – he sold antiques – he would keep them aside, so that Jean-Pierre could decide whether they be destroyed or not.</p><p>And he texted Jean-Pierre the ones of him anyway, although he didn’t have to do that at all – he didn’t have to do any of it. Jean-Pierre had asked Asmodeus before, if he had told MacKinnon to do it, but he had said that he didn’t.</p><p>Jean-Pierre paid it back – if he came across certain interesting enchanted items or antiques, he would send them onto him.</p><p>It was a strange relationship – it could hardly be called a friendship.</p><p>And the relationship between MacKinnon and Asmodeus, Jean-Pierre didn’t understand at all. MacKinnon had no photographs of Asmodeus, and Asmodeus none of MacKinnon, but MacKinnon had gifted Asmodeus his travelling trunk, and Jean-Pierre knew that MacKinnon had Asmodeus’ every album on one shelf in his lounge.</p><p>“He’s well,” Asmodeus said. “He’s taken an apprentice.”</p><p>“A carpenter?”</p><p>“An antiques dealer,” Asmodeus said cleanly, setting the envelope for Ignatius Mwangi on top of his outgoing pile and picking up another letter to reply to. “And an enchanter, as well.”</p><p>“I didn’t know he took apprentices.”</p><p>“He hasn’t before,” was the quiet reply. “But he seems to be quite fond of her, and I see why. She’s a funny girl – very direct, inquisitive, strong. You remember those years ago, Raphael pulled that man out of the fire, and left some of his fire within him?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said, glancing at Asmodeus’ face as he continued to untangle fairy lights, but as ever, it was unreadable. “He became a fireman, didn’t he, immune to the flames?”</p><p>“His name was Robert Young,” Asmodeus said, “and he was already a fireman. Anyway, Hamish’s new apprentice is his granddaughter. She inherited Raphael’s gift.”</p><p>It didn’t happen often. Most angels didn’t so burst out of their skins as Raphael did, didn’t struggle quite so much to contain themselves within skin and flesh and bone, but when angels did overflow, they could cause damage or strange creation.</p><p>Jean-Pierre knew of angels who had Fallen into deserts and made oases in the sand, their very touch making of the barren earth green grass and sprouting trees; he knew others who had been beacons for nearby animals, or had found themselves magnetic, that ore dug itself out of the ground and crawled to touch their skin as though made animate.</p><p>And Raphael—</p><p>Raphael frightened Jean-Pierre.</p><p>He wasn’t a man to be frightened of much, he didn’t think, and he was proud of the fact, but Raphael frightened him – when he had Fallen, Asmodeus said all those years ago, the flame had burned so huge and hot from within him that it was too powerful even for him to contain, and that was why his eye sockets were empty, the skin inside cauterised and bare, because they had popped and fizzled and evaporated to nothing by the time Asmodeus had come upon him.</p><p>Most of the time, he was just a man with a cane and a purifying touch, but Jean-Pierre had seen him angry, and when he was angry the flames burst from his head as though he were some fiery Medusa, and the bandages he wore around his face burnt and charred and dropped away, so that flames filled the empty sockets instead.</p><p>“Where is he?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Hamish?”</p><p>“Raphael.”</p><p>“Oh. Ghana, last I heard. Working in the hospital in Nalerigu.”</p><p>“Will you go to him? After Christmas?”</p><p>Asmodeus gave him a funny look. Jean-Pierre wished he understood the friendships he had, outside of he and Colm. “Do I usually?”</p><p>“I don’t know. What about Djedkhonsuefankh? I heard that he was putting out feelers, of recent, as to leaving that little house of his.”</p><p>Asmodeus frowned at him, but he showed no surprise. “Who told you that? Neither he nor his counterpart use social media.”</p><p>“People they talk to talk to my people,” Jean-Pierre said. “You’re not the only one with connections, you know.”</p><p>“I won’t be going anywhere until February,” said Asmodeus, and Jean-Pierre turned to look at him, his mouth falling open. He felt a bright, sunny feeling warm within him, felt his lips dragged into a smile.</p><p>“Really?” he asked, and Asmodeus smiled at him, the expression indulgent.</p><p>“Really,” he said, “assuming no necessitating circumstances. There are only two Falls next year, and neither of them ought be particularly arduous, spaced apart as they are. I should be here quite a bit.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jean-Pierre said, beaming as he flicked the lights on, and beginning to adjust them, making sure they settled nicely on the tree. He preferred real pixies, but it had really seemed to disturb Aimé, for whatever reason. Last night, Jean-Pierre had asked him why not, and Aimé had laughed, asked why Jean-Pierre was so interested in keeping little creatures captive.</p><p>That wasn’t what Jean-Pierre wanted at all, and he had stayed awake for some time afterward, wondering if that was what Aimé thought of him.</p><p>“Asmodeus,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“Yes, Jean?”</p><p>“Did you tell Aimé to come back to me?”</p><p>“No,” said Asmodeus. “Nor did I tell him not to.”</p><p>“Did you want him to?”</p><p>“Yes,” Asmodeus said cleanly. “I like what he brings out in you – I like what you bring out in him. But it was his choice, not mine, and this was one choice of his I didn’t wish to influence one way or the other.”</p><p>“Colm would rather I was alone forever,” said Jean-Pierre. “Or dead.”</p><p>Asmodeus sighed, and set his board aside. “Come here, Jean.”</p><p>When Jean-Pierre climbed into his brother’s lap, Asmodeus wrapped his arms loosely around Jean-Pierre’s side. Jean-Pierre pressed his knees into Asmodeus’ torso, his cheek on Asmodeus’ shoulder and his forehead pressed into the side of his neck. When Asmodeus’ hand dragged slow, gentle lines up and down Jean-Pierre’s back, Jean-Pierre released a quiet, unhappy noise, but not because he wanted him to stop.</p><p>“Colm doesn’t want you to be alone,” Asmodeus murmured into the top of his hair. “You know that, don’t you?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre said nothing, and Asmodeus squeezed him a little more tightly.</p><p>“Do you think he will leave me again?” asked Jean-Pierre, squeezing his fingers around the front of Asmodeus’ cardigan, and Asmodeus shook his head, his chin rubbing against the top of Jean-Pierre’s head.</p><p>“No, I don’t think so,” Asmodeus said softly. “I think he was bound up with you from the moment he laid eyes on you.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre pressed closer, shifting his position so that Asmodeus would scratch his back with his nails instead, dragging over Jean-Pierre’s shoulders. Jean-Pierre knew that he was testing if Jean-Pierre had been looking after his wings, because he pressed and dragged at the most sensitive spots, but Jean-Pierre didn’t complain, sighing at the pleasant sensation.</p><p>“You like him better,” said Jean-Pierre, “than you liked Manolis. Or Rupert.”</p><p>“I do. Truth be told,” Asmodeus said, “I like him better than Bui and Benoit, too.”</p><p>“What about Farhad?”</p><p>“Oh, I wouldn’t be unfair to Farhad,” Asmodeus said quietly, softly. “He was always different to the rest.”</p><p>Asmodeus had liked Farhad, Jean-Pierre knew that – they had talked a lot about literature, about philosophy, and sometimes, when Farhad was in hospital, Asmodeus would read to him where Jean-Pierre could not.</p><p>It had been Asmodeus who had found an angel who would do the funeral for them, when so many of them turned away men like him.</p><p>“Do you think he’s like Jules? Aimé?” asked Jean-Pierre quietly.</p><p>“I think what makes him like Jules,” said Asmodeus, “is that in his head he is making no excuses for what you are, and who you are. He sees the truth in you, and he accepts it – embraces it, even, for all you terrify him. None of the others did that, Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“They all made one or another excuse for you, or rationalised you, in their heads. Rupert edited away what he knew of your violence; Bui thought you an angel there to punish him; Benoit an angel to elevate him. Aimé doesn’t see you as some religious reward or punishment, and nor does he imagine away the faults of yours that scare him. He loves you entirely. But for Jules and Farhad, none of the others gave you that.”</p><p>“That’s not fair,” Jean-Pierre whispered, feeling a sort of cold, clawing discomfort in his very heart, his eyes welling up and threatening to tear. “They did love me, they did—”</p><p>“Shh,” hushed Asmodeus softly, kissing his temple. “They did love you, of course they did. You know what isn’t what I meant.”</p><p>“I want him to be like us,” Jean-Pierre said. “Colm has been teaching him to throw knives, you know, and he’s been learning to fight properly. That makes you angry?”</p><p>“Who says I’m angry?” Asmodeus asked, curling his fingers around Jean-Pierre’s hair.</p><p>Jean-Pierre shrugged his shoulders, and for a little while longer, he kept close to Asmodeus, felt the heat of his body, the slow beat of his heart, and the cold depth of no feeling he exuded, like a well of neutrality.</p><p>He felt, deep in his bones, that things were soon to change, and it rendered in him an impossible anxiety.</p><p>“Is Colm going to leave us?” he asked.</p><p>“I don’t think he wants to,” Asmodeus said. “But we are each immortal, Jean – Heidemarie only has a few more years left. Would you have had Jules unhappy and alone at the end of his life, if Colm had called you to?”</p><p>“That’s different,” said Jean-Pierre, and Asmodeus kissed his head again.</p><p>“Finish the decorations,” he said, stroking his fingers over Jean’s cheek.</p><p>When Jean-Pierre stood from Asmodeus’ lap again, he heard Asmodeus laugh, and he looked back.</p><p>“A Christmas card?” he asked.</p><p>“From James Byrne,” murmured Asmodeus, tapping his nail against the card. “He’s working at a rape crisis centre as a counsellor. Has a little flat for himself, and is growing roses. He’s adopted a parrot.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre hesitated, feeling a strange emotion in his chest. “That’s good for him,” he said softly.</p><p>Asmodeus smiled. It was a genuine smile, Jean-Pierre thought – it was small, as muted as any of Asmodeus’ other expressions, but his eyes had a depth of feeling in them Jean-Pierre didn’t know how to quantify. “Yes,” he rumbled. “Yes, it’s very good.”</p><p>“Peadar, you prick,” came a voice from the hallway as the door opened, “would you— fuck off, I’m trying to walk here! Yes, I like you very much too, get your mouth off my laces.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre giggled into the pine branches as he picked up a bauble from the box, and when Peadar padded cheerfully into the room with his tail up in the air, Jean-Pierre greeted him warmly, and scratched his cheeks.</p><p>When Aimé entered the room, his trousers held a second coat of orange fur.</p><p>“I brought you strawberries,” he said when Jean-Pierre leaned down to kiss him, and Jean-Pierre felt his heart give a little jump in his chest, cupping Aimé’s beard.</p><p>“Thank you,” he murmured, and put himself back to his work.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“You’re home earlier than I expected,” said Jean-Pierre. He was wearing an incredibly ugly Christmas jumper that <em>must</em> have been from his own wardrobe, because Aimé didn’t think either Colm or Asmodeus would be caught dead in an oversized jumper that read <strong>SANTA’S FAVOURITE HO</strong>.</p><p>Well.</p><p>Asmodeus, maybe.</p><p>“I wanted to borrow your brother,” Aimé said as he put the strawberries in the fridge and pulled out a dish of tuna Peadar hadn’t finished earlier and put it on the floor for him. “If he lets me.”</p><p>“It rather depends on what you want to borrow me for,” said Asmodeus, not looking up from his paperwork.</p><p>“Colm said he’d drive me around and help me deliver the paintings I’m not sending by courier, keep costs down,” Aimé said. “I’d just need help packing the car up and driving them around – I’d ask to borrow the car, but I’m not on Colm’s insurance. I assume you are.”</p><p>“I’m not sure that <em>Colm</em> is on Colm’s insurance,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>“Yes, he is, and so are you,” said Jean-Pierre primly. “I did it so that it would get done.”</p><p>“Do you pay for his insurance as well?” asked Asmodeus, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>“Go deliver your presents, Saint Nicholas,” replied Jean-Pierre archly, turning around, and Aimé laughed at the offended look on Asmodeus’ face. “Peadar and I shall continue to deck the halls.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, moving up behind Jean-Pierre and pulling up the hem of his jumper so that he could slide his hands into Jean-Pierre’s back pockets, making him release a sharp yelp of delight and laugh, leaning back against Aimé’s chest and turning to look at him.</p><p>“Take you for dinner after?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Alright,” said Jean-Pierre. “But you remember we’re meeting Pádraic after the grotto is finished for today?”</p><p>“When’s that done, six?”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“We’ll all go somewhere,” Aimé said. He was in a good mood, and it was made better by the soft way Jean-Pierre smiled up at him, the way he reached back to card his hand in Aimé’s hair.</p><p>“D’accord,” Jean said softly, and pecked him on the mouth before looking back to the tree.</p><p>Aimé squeezed his arse for good measure, and Jean-Pierre laughed, slapping his hands away. At the light of Jean-Pierre in his stupid fucking Christmas jumper, tinsel around his neck and his tree half-decked, Aimé found himself actually looking forward to Christmas for once, and grinned.</p><p>“You okay to go?” he asked De, who was standing to his feet, and somehow was managing to stroke Peadar without getting any cat hair on him at all.</p><p>“If you are,” he said pleasantly, and led the way out to the car.</p><p>They had driven a little ways toward Aimé’s apartment when Aimé said, “Can I, uh… Can I ask you something?”</p><p>“Another favour?” Asmodeus asked, though he didn’t sound irritated.</p><p>“Advice.”</p><p>“If you like.”</p><p>“I, uh. I know Jean fixed up the enchantment in my place, but I really don’t, um. You know, it’s in my father’s name, it’s his property. You know we talked about finding somewhere else?”</p><p>“Ah,” Asmodeus said softly. “Yes, I’ve been looking at space for you – I wasn’t sure if you’d want to live very close to us or linger in the city, what sort of budget you’d like to have. We can sort out your business plan first, have a look at your savings, your finances. Do you have any stock?”</p><p>“I think so,” Aimé said. “I have the papers and shit in my desk, shares in my dad’s company, and gifts from birthdays and stuff, stock in other companies.”</p><p>“Do you ordinarily receive your dividends?”</p><p>“I don’t really check my bank account,” Aimé muttered.</p><p>Asmodeus’ lip twitched, and although he didn’t actually laugh at Aimé, Aimé shifted uncomfortably, feeling a sort of guilt stew in his stomach. He didn’t even want to think what Colm would say about it, about Aimé not even having any idea how much money he had, that he’d never had to worry about it.</p><p>“We’ll sort it out,” Asmodeus said. “Don’t worry.”</p><p>“I didn’t realise you were looking for me,” Aimé said. “Thanks.”</p><p>“I told you I would.”</p><p>“Yeah, but…”</p><p>But what? Aimé didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to say he’d almost thought Asmodeus had said it just to chill him out and get him to stop talking, didn’t think he’d really want to, didn’t think Asmodeus would really… care.</p><p>But he did care. Cared enough to look.</p><p>“Do you want to receive clients in your studio?” Asmodeus asked.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aimé said. “I guess I didn’t really think about it. Should I?”</p><p>“Well, we could get you somewhere where you’ve an open plan space, where you could paint, but also have a waiting area for clients, for anyone who might want to post for portraiture – either way, it would be my recommendation that you have paintings in a window display regardless, either in your studio or in someone else’s window, and you need a proper website.”</p><p>“I have a website.”</p><p>“You have a Facebook page,” Asmodeus said disapprovingly.</p><p>“I thought you didn’t use computers.”</p><p>“And yet even I realise you need a website.”</p><p>“You don’t have to help me, you know.”</p><p>“I do know,” said Asmodeus. “And before you say it, I’m not helping you only for Jean-Pierre’s sake – Jean couldn’t care less if you had an occupation at all, and wouldn’t bat an eye if you decided to live with us, and you know that if you ever tired of painting or if you didn’t want to expand your business directly after graduating, you could work alongside Colm, or we could find something else for you.”</p><p>“Job market is shit.”</p><p>“You have nepotism on your side,” said Asmodeus said. “That hasn’t disappeared simply because you have a new family now – just that the roles available have changed.”</p><p>“A new family,” Aimé repeated, and looked at Asmodeus’ face as he drove. “You really think that?”</p><p>“You can call it something else, if you like,” said Asmodeus. “But Colm and I have embraced you as an extension of Jean-Pierre, as has Pádraic, Bedelia, Doros. Other angels will typically follow suit, and that’s without Benedictine’s word. The more of us you meet, the more angels will consider you a part of our network, so to speak.”</p><p>“Jean-Pierre’s word wouldn’t be good enough?”</p><p>Asmodeus cleared his throat. “Jean-Pierre has a reputation for… I’m afraid angels don’t necessarily assume a companion of his is long-term on sight alone.”</p><p>“You know, Colm would just say—”</p><p>“I know what Colm would say,” Asmodeus said.</p><p>Aimé laughed softly. “You’re a good big brother. You know that?”</p><p>There was, for just a moment, a little tension in the car between them, a pause that went on just a little bit too long. Asmodeus said, then, “I really do try my best.”</p><p>“What did you get Jean for Christmas?”</p><p>“New boots. I had them commissioned for him.”</p><p>“Do you have to get presents for every angel on Earth?”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed quietly. “No,” he murmured. “My celebration is broadly secular and done out of obligation – I only do it for Jean and Colm, Jean especially.”</p><p>“That mean you didn’t get me anything?”</p><p>“Helping you sort out your life isn’t enough for you?”</p><p>“I can’t unwrap my life,” said Aimé, and Asmodeus smiled, his white teeth showing as he did so.</p><p>“I suppose I’ll simply have to put something under the tree for you, then,” he said mildly, and Aimé tapped his fingers against his knee. “You haven’t heard word from your father?” asked Asmodeus.</p><p>“Can you do what Colm does?”</p><p>“I could, if I wanted to,” said Asmodeus. “I never have before.”</p><p>“Then how do you…?”</p><p>Asmodeus said nothing, and after they’d driven past a few more streets, Aimé said, “No. But he must be keeping tabs on me. He does that.”</p><p>“So does Jean,” said Asmodeus. “I expect his people have noticed your father’s people, if you care to ask him.”</p><p>“I don’t know whether to find that creepy or charming,” Aimé muttered, even though he was fairly, embarrassingly sure that he felt it was the latter. He felt just a little bit warm, and while he knew he should have felt scared, he didn’t feel frightened at all.</p><p>“That is the quandary he typically poses.”</p><p>“You gonna come to the Christmas party, if you don’t celebrate? The church one?”</p><p>“I’ll come,” Asmodeus said. “It’s on the 22<sup>nd</sup>, isn’t it? Benedictine will be here by then, she’ll come along as well.”</p><p>“What’s she like? Benedictine?”</p><p>“She shares quite a bit in common with Colm,” said Asmodeus softly, although there was an edge in his tone Aimé didn’t know what to make of. “She’s very community-focused, is quite fit, does odd jobs where she can. She knows her way around building a rifle or a henhouse. But she’s a lawyer, by trade, does a lot of pro bono defence work and so on. And she’s a human rights activist in her own right.”</p><p>“You don’t like her?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Asmodeus glanced at him. “I do,” he said. “I love Benedictine very much. I only really see her for the holidays, that’s all.”</p><p>“Is It going to be shit?”</p><p>“The party?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Well, it’s a church party with members of the local congregations and several priests. I think there’ll be an art table, if that appeals to you.”</p><p>“The kids’ art table?”</p><p>“You could donate some nice paints,” Asmodeus suggested, and Aimé sniggered, shaking his head. “No, Aimé, I don’t think it will be particularly exciting. We’ll be hosted in the big community room until around eight or so, I think, perhaps nine, and then we’ll filter off to pubs.”</p><p>“And then we can start doing coke,” said Aimé.</p><p>“No one’s stopping you from starting earlier,” said Aimé. “But don’t share it with the children.”</p><p>Aimé shook his head. “I’m not gonna do fucking coke at the church party. I’m just taking the piss.”</p><p>“I think it will be fun,” Asmodeus said. “Jean and Colm will bring their instruments, I’ll bring my accordion. It will be, as Colm would say, excellent craic.”</p><p>“Please crash the car,” said Aimé, and Asmodeus laughed from deep in his chest as he pulled up in front of Aimé’s flat.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please fill out this survey about Powder and Feathers <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1R5L5s4dYG5KTg4MSXKiTXbG2e9pYboAEVrxSMQZyRw0/edit?chromeless=1">here!</a></p>
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<a name="section0036"><h2>36. The Coming New Year</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>Colm had taken a window seat, and he waited, his fingers in his ears, until after almost every other passenger had gotten off the plane, except for an auld fella who used a wheelchair, and was waiting for the cabin crew to get his chair out at the ramp where the door opened before they brought him out on the aisle chair.</p><p>He felt sick to his stomach, so overwhelmed with other people’s feelings that he felt as though he were drowning in it – on the way out, he’d swallowed a few sleeping pills and knocked himself out for the flight, but he must have lost the bottle while he was in Berlin or moving through security in the airport, because he hadn’t been able to find it for the life of him.</p><p>He’d endured the whole flight, crammed into the plane with all these people, no escape from them, so many of them anxious or excited or angry or whatever else, all those powerful emotions, and absolutely no <em>peace</em>.</p><p>He wasn’t quite ready for the move through the airport just yet, but he still pulled himself out of the chair and pulled his jacket back on.</p><p>“You look pale as bird shite,” said the auld fella when Colm got to his feet.</p><p>“I don’t like flying,” said Colm.</p><p>“We’ve landed now,” said the old man, and Colm gave him a thin smile, reaching up into the overheard compartment and tugging out his own satchel, then grabbing the old man’s holdall as well. “Thanks.”</p><p>“No trouble,” said Colm, leaning back against the chair. “I don’t normally fly – I normally get the ferry if I can.”</p><p>“Emergency?” asked the old man,</p><p>“My daughter,” said Colm. “She’s in a bad family situation.”</p><p>“Shit,” said the old man, and Colm felt the genuine empathy that came off him, felt impressions of a difficult childhood, an angry father, an aunt with a belt in hand— He felt a little sick, and he took a swig of his water. He’d drunk a little whiskey on the flight, but drinking didn’t really help numb any of the feelings, not when it was hundreds at once. “You can’t get her out?”</p><p>“I can,” Colm said. “She’s gonna spend Christmas with them, but they want to put her in a home in the new year and she’s, uh, she’s really upset, you know, but they can’t be fucked looking after her, so I’m gonna bring her home with me.”</p><p>The old man was surprised at that, and there was a vague jealousy, a bitterness, underneath it. But then, he said, “You got time for that?”</p><p>“She’s my daughter,” said Colm. “What else is my time for?”</p><p>The old man nodded his head, and Colm picked up his bag for him as the cabin girls helped him into the aisle chair – it was too wide for the aisle – and once they transferred him into his big electric chair on the aisle, Colm said, “On the back or in your lap?”</p><p>“In my lap,” said the old man, and Colm handed it over, settling it down on the old man’s knees. “You scared of driving, too?”</p><p>Colm laughed. “Nah, my brother’ll pick me up, and it’ll be all good. Go dté tú slán.”</p><p>“Slán,” said the old man with a small smile, and Colm tried to concentrate on the warmth that came off him, the surprise, and carry it as a focus as he went over to the passport checks.</p><p>He always tried to do that, after a bad flight, tried to focus on one person’s feelings and hook himself into those to block out all the rest, but he was fucking exhausted, and it was a small solace.</p><p>He did laugh, though, when someone obviously made a stupid comment about the guy’s wheelchair, and a kind of mute, painful surprise mixed with black humour at how stupid someone was.</p><p>Just as he exited the airport, Asmodeus pulled up in his car, and none of the fucking airport cops had time to come up and complain: Colm was already in the car, and even as Asmodeus started off again he reached out and put his hand on De’s shoulder, felt the impossible, cold emptiness that came off of him.</p><p>“Fuck,” he mumbled, squeezing De’s shoulder, his eyes tight shut. It was a relief beyond fucking measure.</p><p>“It’s alright,” said Asmodeus softly. “Take your time. You couldn’t sleep on the plane?”</p><p>“Lost my fucking pills,” said Colm.</p><p>“Oh,” Asmodeus said quietly, and did something he almost never did, as obsessive as he was about his form while driving: he took his left hand off the wheel and rested it on Colm’s chest.</p><p>Colm grabbed his hand with both hands, hugging it against himself, and he closed his eyes, willing the headache to go away, the raw sensitivity all over his skin, inside his skin.</p><p>“Jean’s first aid kit has painkillers,” Asmodeus said. “It’s in the glovebox.”</p><p>“I’m okay,” Colm muttered, and concentrated on the cold, empty core of Asmodeus, that well of blissful unfeeling.</p><p>The traffic wasn’t too bad – it was late in the evening – and after ten minutes or so Colm didn’t feel quite so bad. He knew once he went home, ate something, and slept, he’d sleep for a fucking day, but he was too tired to sleep just yet, even if Asmodeus would carry him out of the car.</p><p>“How is she?” Asmodeus asked.</p><p>Colm inhaled, and thought of the way Heidemarie had burst into tears as soon as she’d clapped eyes on him – she almost never cried, and it had torn out his fucking heart to see her. He’d been gentle about pulling her up to sit with him, her head rested on his chest, and once she’d finished crying, she’d thanked him for coming, and then said, of all things, that he didn’t have to.</p><p>“She’s, uh, she’s okay,” Colm said. “She’s tired, the arthritis is, um, is not great. I think maybe she needs different meds, but when I asked, she said she hasn’t been to the doctor in fucking—” He sighed hard. “I’m gonna bring her back here. I’m gonna, uh, I’m gonna take the rest of the land off the allotment and build her a house of her own – bungalow, you know, something good, accessible.”</p><p>He was fidgeting, he was aware, in his place, his knees bouncing, his fingers drumming hard against the top of his thighs, just at the fucking memory of the <em>pain</em> she’d been in, and he’d almost blown his fucking gasket talking to Angela and her prick husband, the way they’d kept saying they just didn’t have <em>time</em>, that they were so <em>busy</em>, all the while thinking about the fucking <em>money</em>…</p><p>They’d thought about it, even, hiring a fucking carer for her, but they wanted to rent out the damned fucking bungalow instead.  </p><p>“I’ll go out every day,” he said, “and Bedelia’ll help too, and maybe I’ll hire somebody live-in if Heidi wants? We talked about it, and she’d like to try living on her own again first. I want Jean or, or another doctor to have a look at her, consult for new meds, maybe acupuncture or some shit, too, ‘cause I know I’m not an expert but I feel like it’s more advanced than it should be. She’s scared to exercise, because she doesn’t want to hurt herself, but she’s had no other support, so how the fuck can she? But she can’t fucking go to the doctor unless someone takes her, so.”</p><p>Asmodeus turned his hand, keeping the back of it pressed against Colm’s sternum, and squeezed his hand.</p><p>Colm sighed.</p><p>“I’ll help you build,” said Asmodeus. “I’m here until February.”</p><p>“Fuck,” Colm said, feeling relief rush through him, and he looked at Asmodeus’ face, the glint of the streetlamps off his glasses, as they kept driving. “Really?”</p><p>“Really,” said Asmodeus, and met his eyes for a second with one of his small smiles.</p><p>Colm grinned, for all the fatigue. “Fuck,” he said. “I forgot about Aimé’s paintings and shit.”</p><p>“We delivered them yesterday,” Asmodeus said. “And Aimé’s been doing all the work on your allotment, in the garden. You want to hear something very funny?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Uh, yeah?”</p><p>“You recall that you told the O’Malleys you’d help them get their decorations down from their attic, what with Mr O’Malley’s bad back, and Mrs O’Malley being frightened of heights?”</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>,” said Colm. “Shit, I forgot—”</p><p>“No need to panic,” said Asmodeus. “Aimé got their decorations down for them this morning, and Aimé and Jean have spent the day helping them put them up. Peadar was particularly pleased, having his two favourite families under one roof and dancing about with him whilst singing along to Christmas music.”</p><p>Colm stared at De’s face, and then he laughed, really, genuinely laughed, and felt a little of the fatigue and stress ease from where it was tightly packed in his chest.</p><p>“Aimé did that?”</p><p>“He was worried something was Peadar when he answered the door, and Mr O’Malley tried three times to tell him he needn’t, that it was no bother, but Aimé insisted. He fixed their sink as well.”</p><p>“<em>Really</em>?” Colm asked.</p><p>“No,” said Asmodeus. “I did. But he did come to get me when Mr O’Malley mentioned it and he had no idea what to do.”</p><p>Colm laughed harder this time, leaning back in his chair. “You show him what to do?”</p><p>“It was a leak, the washer needed replacing. But I told him you’d teach him, if he asked.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Colm softly, surprised by how much affection that made him feel. “Yeah, I will.”</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“Why do you keep tightening your stance like that?” Jean-Pierre asked as they came apart again, and Aimé released a vague grumbling sound from low in his throat, waving one wrapped hand.</p><p>“I’m trying not to,” he said.</p><p>“It makes you very easy to unbalance,” Jean-Pierre said, looking baffled.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said, rolling his shoulders and widening his stance a little more, his knees bent. “I know. Colm says it’s because I keep thinking I’m boxing.”</p><p>“We’re not boxing.”</p><p>“I <em>know</em>, Jean, I’m not doing it on purpose.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre was smiling slightly, and Aimé rolled his eyes, beckoning the angel forward. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s go again.”</p><p>They had the sofas pushed up against the sides of the room, and they had been sparring since they’d walked back across the road from the O’Malleys. Peadar had walked home with them, initially, but he’d lost interest once he realised they weren’t going to eat anything, and become quite offended when they’d started wrestling instead of sitting down calmly where he could sleep next to them.</p><p>Jean-Pierre lunged, and Aimé caught him at an angle, grabbing the inside of his thigh at the same time he shoved him to one side.</p><p>Jean-Pierre let out a yelp as Aimé dragged him off the floor and threw him down, landing hard on his back. He looked so surprised that Aimé couldn’t help but start laughing, and Jean-Pierre took a second before he giggled.</p><p>“What the fuck was <em>that</em>?” he asked.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aimé said. “Channelling the wrestling.”</p><p>“Very good if you can do it for other people,” Jean-Pierre said. “But I’m a lot lighter than most men – you would strain your back, trying that with Colm.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, leaned in and brushed his lips against Jean’s, stroked his fingers gently through Jean-Pierre’s hair. It had been a good day, had been a good few days – last night had been a pretty nice family dinner, and decorating stuff with the O’Malleys had actually been pretty fun, especially because both the old man and the old lady had gotten <em>hammered</em> with sherry that Aimé had found in their attic, and they’d been in the mood to dance and sing.</p><p>“Hey, Jean,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Yes, Aimé?”</p><p>“You remember what you said, about my dad?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned back on the carpet, his pretty eyes narrowing slightly. “I haven’t done anything to your father,” he said, as though Aimé were accusing him of something, and Aimé wrapped his hand around Jean-Pierre’s side, squeezing slightly.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I didn’t think you had.”</p><p>Aimé felt a kind of anxiety twisting inside him – he hadn’t talked to Jean-Pierre, just yet, about moving his stuff out of the other apartment, about the business plan Asmodeus was helping him iron out, but he had to wonder how much Asmodeus was right, if Jean-Pierre would really be completely okay with it if he had no job at all, if he just stuck around and helped out and did… nothing.</p><p>He thought De was probably right. Not just because De was right about pretty much everything, but because he felt he had a good enough handle on Jean-Pierre and Colm both by now, knew that they’d probably be alright with it.</p><p>That wasn’t what made him anxious.</p><p>“Uh,” Aimé said, “De said that if my dad had people watching me, you’d probably know.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s offended expression softened somewhat, and he reached up to cup Aimé’s cheeks, brushing his fingers gently through Aimé’s beard and wrapping his legs loosely around Aimé’s waist so that Aimé was pinned on top of him. Aimé wished it was a good sign that he looked serious and solemn instead of teasing and smug.</p><p>“Please tell me you look that grim ‘cause my dad spying on me makes you so horny you want to roleplay something weird,” Aimé said.</p><p>“Your father has been retaining an awareness of you, of your movements,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “For what I hear on the grapevine—”</p><p>“In your network of highly online interconnected weirdoes.”</p><p>“<em>On the grapevine</em>,” said Jean-Pierre, a little more loudly, “he finds himself played into a corner. He dislikes your association with me, of course. If it is at all comforting I think his concern that I will harm you is to some extent genuine.”</p><p>“It’s not comforting,” Aimé said. “If he was a dairy farmer he’d be genuinely concerned about harm to his prize cow, but that’s not the same as care.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre stroked his fingers down the side of Aimé’s neck.</p><p>“He would evict you from that apartment,” Jean-Pierre says. “He likes that he should control you by keeping you under a roof he owns, but he knows that is limited once your degree is done. Do you want to go back to university?”</p><p>“After my BA? No.”</p><p>“We would pay for it,” said Jean-Pierre. He was looking at Aimé’s chin, his chest, instead of at Aimé’s eyes. “Asmodeus and I. If you wanted a master’s, a doctorate. I have money enough if it would please you.”</p><p>Aimé exhaled, and he took Jean-Pierre by the hair, tugging him up into a kiss.</p><p>“No, sweetheart, I don’t want to go back to college once my degree’s done,” he said. “But that’s— that’s cute.”</p><p>“He frightens you? Your father?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “Yeah, I guess. My family’s not that weird about bloodlines – I don’t think he’s gonna kidnap me, use me as a sperm donor, and make himself a grandchild. I do think that if I walk out it’d be too bad for business to legally disown me. It’s not like it’s gonna be his first choice, but he would try to kill me, I think. Maybe my mother first, I don’t know.”</p><p>“I would not let him kill you,” said Jean-Pierre, with an abruptly frightening intensity that went right to Aimé’s cock. “I would raze his bloodline to the ground in the other direction, if he tried to kill you.”</p><p>“Very hot, surprisingly comforting,” Aimé said, “but still not an ideal solution.”</p><p>“Just let me kill him then,” said Jean.</p><p>“Convincing,” said Aimé. “Answer’s still no.”</p><p>“I could help you do it yourself,” said Jean-Pierre, pouting out his lips, fluttering his eyelashes. “It would be like Asmodeus showing you how to fix that sink.”</p><p>“Killing my father?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, powerlessly, and leaned in, brushing their noses together.</p><p>“I feel like you laughing is a tacit refusal,” said Jean-Pierre, and although Aimé had his eyes closed, he could see the moue on his face without actually seeing it. “Oh, the car, the car, Aimé—”</p><p>Aimé leaned back, letting Jean-Pierre extricate himself from under him, and he leaned up to look out of the window as Asmodeus and Colm got out of the car.</p><p>He saw the way Jean-Pierre leapt into the air and landed hard in Colm’s arms, wrapping his arms and legs around his brother, and he saw Colm laugh, saw him squeeze Jean tightly, kiss his cheeks. They didn’t try to kill each other, which Aimé was glad to see.</p><p>Colm threw Jean-Pierre over his shoulder and wrapped one arm around his thighs to keep him there as he walked up the path and into the house, giving Aimé a big grin. He looked like dogshit, pale and drawn with bags under his eyes, and Aimé realised he must have thought it too loud as soon as Colm looked at him and laughed.</p><p>“Fuck me, Aimé, what a welcome,” he said, and Aimé mumbled an apology even as Colm pulled him in for a hug, Jean giggling as he was crushed between them.</p><p>“Sorry,” Aimé replied. “I have to remember you’re gonna be sticking your hand in my brain.”</p><p>“Take your boy, would ya?” Colm asked, and turned Jean over in his arms, tossing him to Aimé, and Jean-Pierre went willingly, laughing as he leaned back in Aimé’s arms, bringing up a knee to nudge against his shoulder.</p><p>“She okay?” Aimé asked, and when Jean-Pierre scowled, Aimé wrapped both arms around his knees instead of supporting his back, holding him upside down. He wasn’t tall enough for it – Jean-Pierre put his hands on the ground and pulled away from him into a bridge – but it was enough to interrupt whatever fucking tantrum he was about to pull, because he went out to De instead.</p><p>“She’s okay,” Colm said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and there was stubble all over his jaw – it didn’t grow like Aimé’s, patchy and already greying in places, but strong and dark and thick, a little more red than the hair on the top of his head. “I’m not going to keep it,” Colm said. “I fucking hate having a beard.”</p><p>“You need a pill or something?” Aimé asked. “You look like you need to fucking sleep.”</p><p>“I get sick on aeroplanes,” said Colm. “Scared of flying, and, uh, a hundred other people crammed into a tube with me fucks me even more.”</p><p>“I was about to order a takeaway for me and De,” said Aimé. “You want a three-in-one?”</p><p>“See, that’s what I love about you, Aimé,” Colm said, putting his hands on Aimé’s cheeks and leaning into him, their foreheads touching against one another. “You see a man and you can tell by the cut of him he needs a fucking spicebag.”</p><p>“Go shave,” Aimé said. “This feels gross.”</p><p>Colm laughed, rubbing his knuckles through Aimé’s beard and making him grunt, leaning away.</p><p>Jean-Pierre held Colm’s bag out to him to take upstairs, and Colm smiled at him, patted his brother’s cheek. Aimé wondered if this was a temporary ceasefire, if Jean-Pierre was going to flip as soon as Colm talked about Heidemarie properly.</p><p>Colm gave him a meaningful look over his shoulder.</p><p>“I’ll order that takeaway,” said Aimé, and went to grab his laptop.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>He knew there was something wrong.</p><p>He could feel it from the way Asmodeus hung back a little, the way he smiled distantly and offered to plait Jean-Pierre’s hair as Colm was getting changed, the way that Aimé kissed him a little too sweetly, and offered to give him the plum from his duck when he ordered it, the way that Colm kept his distance.</p><p>“Jean,” said Colm over the dinner table, when their meal was three quarters of the way through, and Jean-Pierre felt his gut wrench suddenly, felt anxiety burst in him like a balloon that had already been filled all the way.</p><p>It wasn’t fair, for Colm to go away and then come home and then <em>immediately</em> ruin it, not when Jean-Pierre and Aimé had had such a good day, not when Jean-Pierre is in a good mood from decorating with the O’Malleys and decorating their own tree, not when everything else has been so <em>nice</em>—</p><p>“Yes?” Jean-Pierre asks cautiously.</p><p>“I need you to be a fucking adult about this,” said Colm.</p><p>“I’m being a fucking adult,” was his immediate retort, and before he could get to his feet, Aimé had put a hand on his shoulder; on the other side of the table, Jean-Pierre saw Asmodeus put a hand on Colm’s shoulder to keep <em>him</em> sitting down as well.</p><p>Perhaps it should have made him angrier, but at least it felt <em>almost</em> like fairness as Aimé squeezed his shoulder, leaned across and slid his thumb over the back of Jean-Pierre’s neck.</p><p>“Don’t fucking start a fight until you’ve said what you want to say,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre felt a little flush of triumph, that Aimé should take his side, and he slid his hand around Aimé’s wrist.</p><p>“Your tactics are as transparent as Jean’s tantrums, Colm,” Asmodeus rumbled. “Best just be out with it.”</p><p>“Heidemarie’s gonna home, come to Dublin, in the new year. February or March time, maybe.”</p><p>“We don’t have space,” said Jean-Pierre immediately, feeling something pop in his chest. “Unless you want to—”</p><p>“Not here,” Colm said. “I’m gonna go out to the land I have for the allotment, I’m gonna build a cottage of her own, so that she can have her own space – but I’ll visit her every day, and she’ll probably come here. And I want you to come have a look at her.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t know what that meant, and it stopped him short for a second. For once, jealous was not the overwhelming emotion he felt, thinking of Heidemarie, and he hesitated, looking across the table at Colm, Colm who was stiff and breathing a little heavier than before, who still had Asmodeus’ hand on his shoulder and was looking at Jean-Pierre like he was a grenade the pin had been pulled out of but hadn’t yet gone off.</p><p>“Look at her?” Jean-Pierre repeated.</p><p>“Her, um,” Colm said, “her arthritis has been getting worse, the past few years, and, um, and her kids haven’t been taking her to the doctor as much, and I know, I know she hasn’t been exercising like she used to ‘cause she’s scared of falling, ‘cause they kinda— They kinda make her feel, um, make her feel guilty, for…”</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t like seeing Colm like this, anxious, tripping over his words, and his stomach felt heavy, thick with concrete. He put his hands on the kitchen table, squeezing its edge.</p><p>“I trust you,” said Colm. “And you always fucking refuse to come meet her, but this is different, Jean, I want to be able to have a doctor I know, that I trust, look at her, and help, and especially because— You know, when she lives here, I <em>need</em> you to be… I need you to be her uncle on this, Jean. She’s my little girl.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre stared at him.</p><p>“I’ve never refused to meet her,” he said quietly. “You always go off to look after her, and you never say for me to join.”</p><p>He remembered the first time he’d talked to Colm, after Heidemarie had grown up, the first time they’d spoken to one another. He’d been angry at the time, he remembered that, still bitter that Colm had let Jean-Pierre alone and hadn’t even bothered to look for him, but he remembered more keenly the way Colm had said after a phone call to where they were working, some time in the 60s, that he needed to go to her, and when Jean-Pierre had stood up he’d snapped he didn’t need anyone slitting her throat, and that it was best for Jean to stay put.</p><p>Jean watched Colm’s mouth open across the table, watched him lean back in his chair.</p><p>“I never fucking— I never meant that,” said Colm.</p><p>“I want to go for a walk,” Jean-Pierre said to Aimé.</p><p>“Okay,” Aimé said, sliding his hand up and into Jean-Pierre’s hair, and he got to his feet, moving into the other room for their coats.</p><p>“I never meant that,” said Colm again. “I know you wouldn’t— Shit, Jean, I was just…”</p><p>“You want to protect her from me,” said Jean-Pierre. “You thought of me as a danger to your—”</p><p>“No,” said Colm. “Fuck, just…”</p><p>Colm put his elbows on the table, ran a hand through his hair. He looked solemn, looked ashamed, and then he said, “You’re forgetting what came before <em>me</em> saying that. That she was one more Nazi like her parents, when she was a fucking baby.</p><p>“I don’t remember,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. He was ashamed too, couldn’t get over the sickening twist inside him, the way he always felt, thinking of… What did Asmodeus call them? Episodes? “I remember that I was angry, before – I remember I said things. I don’t remember what.”</p><p>Aimé wrapped Jean-Pierre’s coat around the back of his chair, and Jean-Pierre reached back to touch his hand.</p><p>“You’ll look at her?” asked Colm. “When she comes over?”</p><p>“I’ll go with you in the new year,” said Jean-Pierre quietly, tugging at the cuff of his sleeve. “Before university starts up again – a few months is too long to leave it, if you’re worried, if she’s worried. If her arthritis is worsening because of a trauma to the bone, it could be infection, it could be… She should go to a doctor now. If you’re worried.”</p><p>“She didn’t want to,” Colm said, leaning back in his chair. “She wanted to— I know I’m fucking angry about it, but her kids are sensitive about it. She just wants to enjoy Christmas with the grandkids, before, uh, before I interfere too obviously. But you’d come? In January?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “Yes, of course I would.”</p><p>Colm looked surprised, but so did Asmodeus – it was that hollow, not quite there surprise that Colm couldn’t see sometimes, because he didn’t know how to read Asmodeus’ face.</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt sick and very unhappy, and he stood to his feet and put his coat on.</p><p>He and Aimé walked arm-in-arm in no particular direction, and when they finally walked home again, Aimé carried him up to bed.</p>
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<a name="section0037"><h2>37. DMC</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t ask him to, but when he let his wings out, Aimé pulled him to sit down on the edge of the bed, kneeling behind him to work on them. It was strange, how normal this had become for him – maybe normal was the wrong word, because every time he still marvelled at the golden sheen of the feathers under his hands, their slightly greasy texture between his fingers. He’d been scared, in the beginning, of pulling out the bent feathers or of digging his fingers hard into the places where the wing oil crusted or scabbed and dragging it free even though it must hurt.</p><p>It did hurt, he think, because Jean-Pierre often hissed in pain after, but even if it wasn’t the case that Jean-Pierre was a masochist, which he certainly fucking was, this was a pain that satisfied him afterward, and the hisses always turned to soft hums.</p><p>He tore a bent feather free, and Jean-Pierre sighed his satisfaction.</p><p>“Good?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Good,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“I’ve been learning,” said Aimé.</p><p>“Learning?” Jean-Pierre repeated, his voice low and soft – it was the same way his voice turned when he was sleepy, but there was a slightly hard edge to it. He was dazed, stuck in his own head, but nowhere close to actually sleeping.</p><p>“The parts of the feather,” said Aimé. “The parts of the wing. Anatomy study. I know the calamus,” he said, and pressed hard on a tertial feather, tapping against where it fitted its shaft beneath the flesh, hearing the hollow noise of it, “and the afterfeather, where even on a big quill it looks and feels like down, and the individual barbs on each feather, the way they form the vane, like threads form a piece of sail, and going all the way up the middle, the spine of the feather, the rachis.”</p><p>“And on each barb?” asked Jean-Pierre, sounding a little more with it now.</p><p>“A barbule,” said Aimé. “And tiny, tiny little hooklets. They help the barbs keep shape?”</p><p>“Mmm.”</p><p>Aimé leaned in close to Jean-Pierre, pressing his face to the frankincense fragrance between the base of each wing, and Jean-Pierre shifted his wings back so that his face was squeezed beneath the weird additional shoulderblades they formed, their muscle pressing his cheeks together as surely as Jean-Pierre’s thighs did, but thick and soft with tiny feathers, and greasy with excess oil.</p><p>Closing his eyes, keeping his body spooned up against Jean-Pierre’s back, he reached up with both hands. “Coverts,” he said, pressing on the top curve of his wing. “Lesser at the top, medium in the middle… Then these down here are the greater coverts, right? And the primary at the edge, which I can’t reach, but there’s also your bastard wings, like a creepy little bat’s finger, where the joint connects.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, and relaxed his second shoulders, letting Aimé tilt his head to the side, so his cheek was against his skin instead.</p><p>“I prefer to call them alulae to bastard wings,” he said.</p><p>“Winglets.”</p><p>“Winglets,” Jean-Pierre agreed softly.</p><p>“Tertiary,” Aimé said, stroking some of them, and then reached further out, “Secondary… Primary all the way out there. Learning the muscles, too, so I can do all those sexy anatomical sketches you do best.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s laugh was soft as he leaned back against Aimé, so that his head could rest on Aimé’s chest and Aimé was looking down at him. His eyes were half-lidded, his eyelashes catching gold in the light. “Are you going to paint me?” asked Jean-Pierre as he looked up at him, his eyes very blue.</p><p>“Can I paint you naked?”</p><p>Disgusted, Jean-Pierre asked, “You were going to paint me clothed?”</p><p>Aimé smiled down at him, curling his fingers in Jean-Pierre’s hair. It wasn’t as though he’d stopped being anxious about his father, because he knew it was there, the fear, but he felt more comfortable now, somehow, like it was overshadowed, like there was another priority to hand.</p><p>“You want to talk about it?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Why?” Jean-Pierre asked. “My brothers think I’m a crazy irrational monster. Why shouldn’t you?”</p><p>“They don’t fuck you,” Aimé said. “I do.”</p><p>“That is a reason you should think better of me?”</p><p>“It’s a reason I should know what I’m up against,” said Aimé. “Could literally get caught with my dick out.”</p><p>It wasn’t that he felt as though he were Jean-Pierre’s equal, because he didn’t, not really.</p><p>He didn’t think he ever could, with Jean-Pierre being what he was – not actually holy, not truly more impressive or even worth more than Aimé was, intrinsically. Logically, he knew that, that one life was worth the same as another, that immortality didn’t actually make someone’s life worth more – sure, he could table it out, come up with different vectors of value. Jean-Pierre was a doctor, had been for centuries, and he’d saved countless lives – but how many had he taken, and how many had he ruined? How many organisations, groups, governments, had he destabilised?</p><p>He admired parts of Jean-Pierre just like parts of the rest of him terrified him – if this was worship, it wasn’t anything he’d learned at church.</p><p>But sitting here with Jean-Pierre sprawled back in his lap, wings laid over him, Jean-Pierre looking up at him with his gaze focused and his lips pressed loosely together, no mask, with Aimé looking down at him in pretty much the same way, it felt like they were two parts of a whole, somehow, like two figures on the back of a playing card, maybe.</p><p>“What’s the card you play with an angel?” asked Aimé. “Not… Not two angels. An angel trumps a king, and two angels trump an army, the king, queen, the general, two soldiers. But there’s an angel and something that trumps some of the other card spreads, like a royal council or a sorcerers’ coterie.”</p><p>“I didn’t know you played cards,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“I used to,” Aimé said. “Not so much here in Ireland, I, uh, I kick it with mundies most of the time, but, but at home in France, with Mémé, I played. And she did, uh, tarot style stuff with a magical deck. My mother hated it, so obviously, I became an expert.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed. “Not so much of an expert,” he said. “You can’t even remember the cards.”</p><p>“It was a long time ago,” said Aimé. “You hate me talking about it because it’s based on you?”</p><p>“It’s not based on me,” said Jean-Pierre. “You’re talking about a Camelot deck, and it’s not a new deck of cards, and none of the games you play with them are new either. After my escape from Camelot, and after my execution of King Rupert, Myrddin suddenly claimed to have invented a new set of cards for magical folk. It’s not new, of course – like everything original Myrddin Wyllt has ever done, it is stolen from what the fae taught him, those years ago when he fell into fae lands.”</p><p>Aimé felt his stomach twist. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, I’m sorry—”</p><p>“You don’t have to be sorry,” said Jean-Pierre, reaching up to stroke his face, and to his credit, he didn’t look pissed off or even sad. “It was certainly intended to insult me, but it never landed, never really bothered me. It’s a fae deck, I can’t remember the family name, with very few modifications – he mostly just put new faces on the same cards and values, gave them new names.</p><p>“The angel card was a kind of fox, in the original deck, and the card you speak of was a mushroom. The fae foxes eat the mushrooms, and the mushrooms let them fly. It all sounds very whimsical, and is depicted so in art, but a fox is still a fox: a fox that flies just has another way to get into the hen house.”</p><p>“And in a Camelot deck?” asked Aimé. “What’s a mushroom?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed softly.</p><p>“Angel,” said Aimé, trying to remember. “Angel, king, queen, wizard, general, knight, soldier. Baker, pellar, blacksmith, tailor, uh, hobo?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre sniggered.</p><p>“It’s bouc in French.”</p><p>“Vagabond or vagrant,” said Jean-Pierre. “The mischief-maker, in disguise as an old man. Bouc is a billy goat.”</p><p>“It’s one of the minor cards.”</p><p>“It is only minor when played alone,” said Jean-Pierre. “Paired with most other cards, it becomes quite powerful – and there is only one in the deck, to be played to either side. It’s the herdsman.”</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>,” Aimé said, putting his head in his hands. “I thought I was saying something sexy and impressive, but it’s the fucking shepherd card.”</p><p>“The herdsman isn’t just a sheepfucker, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre, in tones full of affection. “He’s the guide, the man with hidden wisdom, the unlikely advisor.”</p><p>Aimé sighed. “You know, that meaning makes more sense as a magic mushroom than a shepherd.”</p><p>“I agree,” said Jean-Pierre softly. “But a game invented purely to insult a man is often not one keenly considered.”</p><p> Aimé stayed in place for a second or two, still stroking his fingers through Jean-Pierre’s hair, tugging at it where it curled up slightly, soft waves between his fingers.</p><p>“You ready to talk about it now?” asked Aimé.</p><p>Jean-Pierre turned in Aimé’s lap, and the two of them scooted up the bed, Aimé falling back against the pillows so that Jean-Pierre could lie on his belly between his legs, resting his cheek on the pillow of Aimé’s belly and curling his wings in around his legs.</p><p>“Great blanket,” said Aimé. “They seemed surprised, Colm and De.”</p><p>“Colm thinks he knows everything,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “You think I’m being unreasonable about Heidemarie.”</p><p>Aimé hesitated before he answered, not wanting to upset him, but not wanting to just fob him off, either. “She’s a little old lady, Jean,” said Aimé. “I know I don’t have the context, I’m not trying to attack you for it, but like… What you said about her the other night, when Colm punched you, that was fucked up, especially when it sounds like, you know, fucking elder abuse.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre rested his chin on Aimé’s belly, twisting his lips slightly. “I know it was wrong of me to say what I said. I don’t always mean to… I speak without thinking, sometimes. Something clouds in me and—” Jean-Pierre set his jaw. “But that’s part of what I mean, you know. I love Colm. He’s my brother and I love him very, very dearly, but sometimes he makes me feel very small, and he likes that he does so.”</p><p>“Colm?” Aimé repeated, gently cupping Jean-Pierre’s cheek and stroking his thumb over the side of it when Jean-Pierre leaned into his palm. “What, Colm— he intimidates you, or…?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, looking up to Aimé and shaking his head. “No, not that. He just… He likes his own way.”</p><p>“Unlike you,” said Aimé. “King of letting other people control things.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I can do what he does, you know. The empathy. I can… feel the feelings of everyone around me, their thoughts, their uppermost considerations. If I reach out, touch someone, I can delve even deeper, into things considered more deeply. I put an enchantment on my skin, here,” he leaned up to gesture to his chest, and for a moment Aimé saw the symbols drawn on his chest flare white for a moment before they disappeared again, fading into nothing.</p><p>“You can do a lot of that, right?” asked Aimé. “Enchantment on the… on the skin. It’s dangerous, difficult to do right.”</p><p>“It’s delicate work,” said Jean-Pierre. “Easy to do incorrectly, if you are not an expert like me.”</p><p>“Like you,” Aimé repeated, grinning, and Jean-Pierre smiled. “So, what, he’s pissed you don’t feel other people like he does?”</p><p>“He thinks it makes me less kind,” said Jean-Pierre. “That’s what he says. He thinks I do it because I don’t care about people, but that’s not true, I do. I don’t need to delve into people’s heads to believe them when they tell me they’re suffering. But it’s the other thing he does I don’t like.”</p><p>“The other thing?”</p><p>“He did it to you,” said Jean-Pierre. “When he reaches out, touches you, saps whatever you are feeling off the top of your head. I hate it when he does it, he knows I hate it when he does it, and he does it anyway.”</p><p>Aimé could feel himself frowning as he looked at Jean-Pierre’s face, at the twisted expression pulling at his mouth, his eyes. “Am I missing something?” he asked.</p><p>“Did Asmodeus tell you I’m crazy?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“No,” said Aimé.</p><p>“He did,” said Jean-Pierre. “But he used some other word. Unstable?” His voice was sharp, brittle, in a way Aimé didn’t like to hear, in a way that made him fucking ache.</p><p>“Injured,” said Aimé. “He said you were hurt. I think another time he said that you had, um, difficulty with emotional regulation. He doesn’t think you’re crazy. He loves you.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre said, “Sometimes my feelings are too much, and I… Black out, sometimes. Lose awareness of myself. Other times, I know what I’m doing, I know that I’m being… But I still can’t pull myself back. It’s too much. And I don’t like it, but I have, um, I have sedatives. They used to give me morphine, but I don’t… I don’t like it. It makes me feel very sick. The sedatives I have now are non-narcotic, and they knock me unconscious, until I can, um, until I can control myself.”</p><p>“That’s good,” said Aimé.</p><p>“Good?”</p><p>“Well, I mean, not good, but it’s good that, um, that you don’t have to have morphine anymore, that you can work through it, right?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre looked up at him distrustfully, twisting his mouth again, and said, “You left, before. You left because I scared you.”</p><p>Aimé nodded his head slowly, and he didn’t know what to say, how to explain it, to say that he trusted Jean-Pierre regardless, to say… what? Sure, the idea of Jean-Pierre having an episode and ripping his throat out was scary, but Jean-Pierre had said before, hadn’t he, that he wasn’t normally violent? And even if he was—</p><p>“That was before I knew I could hold my own,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre’s distrustful expression faltered, then faded into a quiet laugh.</p><p>“He always tries to take it off me,” says Jean-Pierre. “My feelings. When I am too full of rage or too full of grief, he wants to help, so he reaches out and he does what he likes to do, what he wants to do, and he takes it away from me, but he can’t <em>do</em> that. It doesn’t <em>fix</em>…”</p><p>“Why not?” Aimé asked. “It makes you— it makes you sick…?”</p><p>“Because what I feel isn’t like what you feel. My feelings are not fleeting, they don’t come and go as quickly, I have mood swings but they are from one extreme to another. Emotions are not just <em>feelings</em>, Aimé, least of all mine, they are complex neurochemical processes that affect our whole bodies – the rate of your heart, the function of your lungs, your gut, your inner ear.” As he spoke, Jean-Pierre sat up, touching Aimé’s body to illustrate what he was saying, and Aimé rested his hands loosely on Jean-Pierre’s hips, looking up at him. “All of is it is connected, because the soul is not just a spirit that pilots a, a meatsuit, with all its feelings disconnected: it is part of us, and we part of it, and this is the same whether we are human, angel, vampire, fae. The body, its processes, our emotions, are holistic in their nature. When Colm pulls my feelings from me he thinks it is a solution because he is no longer bothered by the intensity of my feeling, but it is me that bears the uncomfortable and much more longstanding after effect. It makes me <em>worse</em>, Aimé, and he doesn’t care.”</p><p>“Baby,” Aimé said, reaching up to touch Jean-Pieerre’s neck, now, stroking the sides of his jaw, because Jean-Pierre looked almost on the verge of tears. “It’s okay.”</p><p>“And I tell him no,” whispered Jean-Pierre. “I <em>always</em> tell him no, not to do it, and he does it anyway. That’s why he didn’t look for me, you know.”</p><p>“When Myrddin took you?”</p><p>“He never apologises for anything,” Jean-Pierre muttered. “I always try to say sorry. Even when I mean it, even when I’m angry, I try to… And I do say things, and I do things too, and I try to… I had an episode, and he took it, because I didn’t have, um, I’d run out of my pills, they were new, and I didn’t want the morphine, and I just wanted him to leave me alone, I told him I wanted him to leave me alone, so that I could just— just scream and cry until I could get a hold of myself, and Asmodeus wasn’t there or he would have stopped him, because he knows that I don’t… And he took it from me, and I was so sick, after, I was dazed and confused. It was as bad as morphine. He can’t just skim my feelings away when they’re like that – he takes away whole parts of me. So I left, and I was angry, and I wanted to hurt someone, so I… And then he didn’t look for me, because he felt guilty, and that made me angry, too. He avoided me for a long time, after. I was angry, and I let him, and I avoided him too, and then when we were finally together again I just wanted to forget it, and go back to…”</p><p>Jean-Pierre sat back in between Aimé’s legs, wiping at his eyes.</p><p>“He said you’d refused to meet her,” said Aimé. “Heidemarie.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook his head. “<em>No</em>,” he said. “The first time he said he didn’t need me to come slit her throat, and another time he said he didn’t need me confusing her about what being an angel is. But the time he talked about at dinner today, I don’t remember it, when he said I called her a Nazi. I think it might be true, I don’t think he’d lie, but I remember that he did it to me, I remember he took the… And it makes them even harder to remember, when he does that. And I love him and he loves me and I know he does it because he loves me, but he never says sorry, Aimé, and he tells everyone that everything’s always my fault.”</p><p>“No,” said Aimé. “No, he doesn’t, Jean, he doesn’t…”</p><p>Jean-Pierre was looking at him in a sad, doleful way, and Aimé wrapped his hands under Jean-Pierre’s legs and pulled him more solidly into his lap.</p><p>“I know I’m difficult,” whispered Jean-Pierre against Aimé’s neck. “I don’t mean to be. I don’t mean to be hard or cold, or… I do <em>care</em>, Aimé. I just don’t care the same way he does, and he makes me feel like I’m a cancer for it.”</p><p>“You’re not a cancer,” Aimé said quietly, kissing the side of Jean-Pierre’s temple, then his cheek, then his nose, until he felt Jean-Pierre’s lips shift, until he heard him breathlessly laugh. “And if you are, I’ll let you kill me. How’s that sound?”</p><p>“Not for a long time.” Jean’s voice was thick, but he sounded like he was trying to laugh, and that was good, Aimé thought – and it was good, too, that Jean-Pierre was pulling his wings in around them, squeezing Aimé as if in a second hug on top of the arms around his neck.</p><p>“Not for a long time, no, for now you’re just, uh, a benign tumour.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed louder this time, although he sniffled, and he nodded his head.</p><p>“Do you all have to lie all the time?” Aimé asked. “All three of you?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre leaned back from him, tilting his head to the side and looking at Aimé seriously.</p><p>“Colm mostly doesn’t tell lies he isn’t also telling to himself,” he said quietly. “And I don’t lie to you, anymore – I love you. I tell you the truth, when you ask me. Even… Even when the truth Is unpleasant. Or complicated.”</p><p>“And De?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s frown deepened, his cheeks a little shiny with tears still. “He doesn’t lie,” he said seriously. “Asmodeus never lies. Not to us.”</p><p>“You want some cocoa?” Aimé asked when Jean-Pierre opened his mouth to go on, and Jean-Pierre bit his lip. “I know too much of it makes you sick. Or, or I could run a bath for you, if you want—”</p><p>“No, my feathers are clean,” Jean-Pierre said. “You’ll get them wet. I shouldn’t have any cocoa, I think I already ate too much richness with the plum from your duck.”</p><p>“Oh, shit,” Aimé said. “You feeling okay?”</p><p>“Mm, yes, just a slightly upset stomach. It will pass by tomorrow. Do you think if you go downstairs and call for Peadar, he’ll come and sleep in bed with us?”</p><p>“I can try,” said Aimé, pulling one of Jean’s hands up to his mouth so he could kiss the back of his knuckles.</p><p>“Do you believe me?” asked Jean-Pierre. “Everything I told you?”</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I?”</p><p>“People like Colm more than me,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“You know,” Aimé said, “there’s a pretty big clue that I <em>don’t</em> like Colm more than you, and—”</p><p>“It’s not that big,” said Jean.</p><p>“Ouch,” said Aimé, mocking hurt, and Jean-Pierre shifted in his lap, swallowing. “What, you want to tell me something else? You think I won’t believe you?”</p><p>“He’s listening to everything we’ve said already,” Jean-Pierre muttered. “He’s already going to be pissed off.”</p><p>“Well, that’s his fucking problem if he decides to eavesdrop all the time. Bet it only pisses him off you don’t do it because it stops him having the moral high ground.” Jean-Pierre’s eyes teared up, and Aimé reached up to wipe them. “Oh, sweetheart, Jean, don’t—"</p><p>“I say that,” he said. “That’s all. I like that you take my side.”</p><p>“De takes your side.”</p><p>“Only when he thinks I deserve it. He’s fair, Asmodeus, he tries to be. But he’s not perfect, he’s not God. And I don’t always like to tell him things.”</p><p>“Why? Why wouldn’t you tell him things?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shrugged his shoulders, shifting uncomfortably in Aimé’s lap, and Aimé gently stroked his lower back. “That what you wanted to tell me?”</p><p>“No,” said Jean. “Just— We’ll find out soon enough, when she’s here. And I don’t say this because I am jealous of her – I am jealous, I know I’m jealous, and I know no one likes it, and I don’t like it either, but I am, sometimes, and I know I don’t have the right to be, with Colm. But she’s cruel to him, too, you know.”</p><p>“Heidi?”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>“What do you mean, cruel to him?”</p><p>“They’ve gone years without speaking, before,” said Jean-Pierre. “He never likes to say it to me, but I always know, because people tell me, and I hear about it, which he doesn’t like. She’s said horrible things to him, before, and didn’t let him meet the grandchildren for years – he still hasn’t met the youngest, you know, unless he met her this time. I know they’re mundies, but she uses it as an excuse, to keep him all to herself.”</p><p>“How do you know that?” asked Aimé. “You’ve never met her.”</p><p>“I’ve met me,” said Jean-Pierre. “And I’ve felt him feel it, before. Say it without saying it when I’ve let myself…” He gestured to his chest. “We’re similar, me and Heidemarie. She has a temper, too. She can hurt him more than I can, and she has. You do believe me, don’t you?”</p><p>“I believe you,” Aimé said. “I do.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t look triumphant or pleased – he just looked sad, still, felt small where Aimé had him all but folded on top of his thighs, and Aimé gently leaned him back.</p><p>“Will you be awake for a long time?” asked Jean quietly.</p><p>“A little while, but if Peadar doesn’t come, I’ll come back up to sit with you. Unless you want to come down with me?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre shook his head, reaching for his phone. “Leave the door open. Please.”</p><p>“I know. I never close it.”</p><p>He didn’t even need to call Peadar, once he went downstairs – he opened the door and Peadar blinked up at him, swishing his tail, and walked right past him.</p><p>“Jean’s in bed,” he advised. “Go on, up you go.”</p><p>Peadar bounded up the stairs, and Aimé smiled after him as he went, even knowing that if he stayed the night through he’d wake up spitting ginger hair out of his mouth, like he always did when Peadar chose to stay up in the bedroom with them – why such a big cat felt that his neck was the most comfortable place to lie, Aimé had no idea, but he liked Jean-Pierre’s wings, liked to be curled up between them.</p><p>Peadar and Aimé both.</p><p>“Okay?” he asked Asmodeus as he came into the other room, shutting the door behind him.</p><p>Asmodeus was sitting very still at the table, drinking a mug of coffee and staring into the middle distance, and when he glanced up to Aimé, his face didn’t change: he was frowning in that distant way of his, the tiniest of furrows between his handsome brows.</p><p>“Is Jean alright?” he asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “We had a big DMC about it.”</p><p>“DMC?”</p><p>“Deep meaningful conversation,” said Aimé, and Asmodeus huffed out a sound that was not a laugh as Aimé came past him, taking up De’s cafetiere. “You feeling guilty?”</p><p>“You’re very astute,” Asmodeus murmured. “I didn’t know, that’s all. About— The precise nature of Colm and Jean-Pierre’s disagreements regarding Heidemarie, and I took Colm at face value every time he said Jean-Pierre had refused to meet her. It can be difficult sometimes to stop the two of them from quarrelling, and when I ask questions, I usually make it worse, so I’m afraid for some things, I don’t delve as deeply as perhaps I should.”</p><p>“I don’t think it’s for the likes of us to make that worse or better,” Aimé muttered. “Tonight, he said a lot of… Colm lies?”</p><p>“Of course, all the time,” said Asmodeus. “You thought he didn’t?”</p><p>“I don’t know what I thought,” Aimé said, and sank into the chair beside him. The turf had been allowed to burn down, but the heat from the fire still hadn’t dissipated from the room, and Aimé didn’t see the point in lighting the fire again when he doubted he’d be up for more than an hour longer. “Jean’s worried Colm’s gonna shout at him, though, for what he said to me tonight.”</p><p>“Eavesdropping?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Colm won’t mention it,” said Asmodeus. “He’ll just sulk for a time, and perhaps be swifter to anger than usual.”</p><p>“Does it really upset Jean?” Aimé asked. “When Colm calls him a slut? Is that why he does it so much, because he knows it upsets him?”</p><p>“Colm doesn’t like to think about anything he does,” Asmodeus said quietly. “It’s what sets him and Jean-Pierre apart.”</p><p>“I know he doesn’t like sex, but he never calls you a whore or calls you stupid. Me neither. Well, he calls me stupid, but only because I am, not because… Not because of whatever the fuck their problem is with each other.”</p><p>“You think it’s bad now,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“Benedictine and Jean-Pierre are birds of a feather,” said De. “She’ll provoke them just to see if they’ll fight.”</p><p>“We’re not going to let her, are we?”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed, the sound low and rich and powerless. “I’m certainly willing to try, but I don’t hold out a great amount of hope.”</p><p>“Well,” said Aimé. “I’m here now. I’ll turn the tide.”</p><p>Asmodeus squeezed his shoulder.</p><p>“I want you to hit me the next time I call him crazy,” Aimé said quietly.</p><p>Asmodeus arched an eyebrow. “Hit you?” he repeated.</p><p>“It hurts him,” he said softly. “Hurts him a lot. I don’t… I don’t want him to think I think of him like that.”</p><p>“Alright,” said Asmodeus. “I’ll hit you.”</p><p>“Not that hard,” Aimé said quickly.</p><p>“I’ll hit you as hard as I think you need.”</p><p>“Because that’s not ominous at all.”</p><p>Asmodeus smiled at him, thinly, but it was a smile, one of Asmodeus’ weird smiles. “I’m very glad he has you,” he said quietly. “I’m very, very glad.”</p><p>The two of them sat for a while together, until Aimé gave in and went to bed.</p><p>In the morning, he spat out a mouthful of ginger cat hair and feathers, and Jean-Pierre laughed at him for it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hope you enjoyed the chapter, please do remember to comment if you can!</p><p>Just a note for anyone who doesn't follow me on Twitter - because of the grey area of posting original work on Ao3 and because of course writers here aren't meant to make mention of tip jars et cetera, I've been looking for a different platform upon which to publish my serials, and I've found one. Don't worry if you're currently following PnF, the Boatswain's Hook, or Letters from Ganymede - I do plan to post all of those to their completion here on Ao3, but I won't be publishing new serials or content here, such as further short stories or my newest serial, a 1920s erotic romance between a gentleman and his new butler, An Uncommon Betrothal. </p><p>Apologies for any inconvenience, because I do love the OTW and the Ao3 very dearly, but now that I'm putting so much more time into my writing I'm trying to take my income more seriously, and unfortunately Ao3 just isn't a viable platform for that - and why should it be, when it's intended for fanworks?</p><p>You can find me on <a href="http://twitter.com/johannestevans">Twitter</a> or &lt;<a href="https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>, and if you'd like to check out the first chapter of An Uncommon Betrothal, you can do so on <a href="https://johannestevans.medium.com/an-uncommon-betrothal-e33689da9929?source=your_stories_page-------------------------------------">Medium</a> or on the new platform, <a href="https://www.worldanvil.com/community/manuscripts/read/9438829611-johannestevans-an-uncommon-betrothal">WorldAnvil</a>.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0038"><h2>38. To Be Frank</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>He was in a sore mood in the morning, feeling a mix of guilty and indignant and just plain irritable, and he was glad to find that despite rising very early, as he always did, that Asmodeus was not home to greet him when he came downstairs, like he usually was.</p><p>Jean-Pierre and Aimé were still in bed, Peadar dozing between their necks and purring up a storm, and Colm was undisturbed as he went down to the kitchen, ate a sandwich, and threw on his coat to go out to the allotment.</p><p>It had been impossible not to take it in, last night, not to listen, not to <em>feel</em>, as Jean-Pierre and Aimé talked about fucking cards and Myrddin and… And him.</p><p>Even as exhausted as he was, he hadn’t been able to sleep, knowing that Jean-Pierre was all but telling Aimé Colm abused him because he didn’t let him scream until his throat bled, or hurt himself, or hurt anybody else, and there Aimé was, fucking believing him, and taking it all to heart.</p><p>He smoked as he walked the boundary of the rest of the allotment, the land he hadn’t used much yet, and had let grow over with meadow to encourage in butterflies and bees to help the rest of the crop at the other end. There was more than enough space for a small bungalow – it didn’t need to be big, just needed a bedroom, a kitchen, a bath, and he could have a second little room with a kitchenette, if she needed live-in help, in the end.</p><p>She wouldn’t be here long, after all, even if Jean-Pierre sorted out the arthritis. She was old.</p><p>He was all but building her a crypt.</p><p>The weed mellowed him out slightly, took the hard edge off his hard mood, and he kept smoking until he felt himself even out, until the grief didn’t feel quite as keen, and the indignation had faded to a more distant concern, and the rage bubbling underneath his skin had been soothed from a boil down to a gentle simmer.</p><p>It was easier out here, at least, slap bang in the middle of almost nowhere, where the closest emotions he could feel came from birds and cows in the next pasture over.</p><p>He breathed slowly in, felt the bitter cold of the December air sting at his teeth and his throat and his lungs, and he thought of having Heidi here, seeing her every day, and he felt himself smile. It had been easier, in recent years – he didn’t mean to infantalise her, but it was easier in the way it had been when she was a little girl, because she couldn’t walk away from him anymore, couldn’t leave when she knew he was coming.</p><p>He knew exactly how selfish that thought was, and he ached for himself and his daughter both.</p><p>He drove home in a slow daze, dimly aware of the world moving a great deal more slowly, but it was just before seven, and the roads still hadn’t had time to get busy when he came back into the house.</p><p>Peadar miaowed plaintively as he walked into the living room, winding his way around Colm’s legs, and Colm leaned down to pick him up, holding the big animal in his arms as he walked into the kitchen, where Aimé was brewing coffee.</p><p>“Nothing for our boy here?” Colm asked.</p><p>“Certainly there is,” was Aimé’s dry response. “When he realised it was cat food on offer, he seemed to lose interest.”</p><p>Peadar wriggled in Colm’s arms, and Colm laughed at the feeling that came off him, the hunger, the dissatisfaction – he knew damn well that the food in the dish on the table was exactly the same as what he’d get at home, and negated the point of coming over to the angels’ for food in the first place.</p><p>“Poor lad,” said Colm mildly, and dropped him on the floor, setting the dish beside him.</p><p>Peadar sniffed it, then took another glance up at Colm, who was looking down at him expectantly, and to Aimé, who was resoundingly ignoring him as he poured coffee into a mug.</p><p>Through the pleasant haze, which was already fading – he’d smoked before he’d started work, and it had been a few hours since then, feeling the cold, slightly hard texture of the soil under his hands, moist when he reached past through the freezing dew, the smell of it, of the plants in their polytunnel too, and then, the heat and the brightness of the lights when he went underground, and worked on the cannabis plants – he was aware of Aimé’s slight edge of anxiety, the stiffness in his body as he waited for Colm to be angry with him.</p><p>He had a half-crate of different cactus fruits in the car, and some more mushrooms, too, but he’d get to them in a few minutes.</p><p>Aimé was in loose jeans and a paint-covered jumper, and Colm reached out, pulling a down feather out of his hair.</p><p>“De still out?” he asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Aimé.  “Maybe he didn’t sleep, I don’t know. If he did, he went to bed after I did.”</p><p>“He never sleeps much,” said Colm. “Help me take the crop out of the car?”</p><p>“Sure,” said Aimé.</p><p>For a while, the two of them worked in relative silence, once they’d brought in the boxes and set them aside, and then made their way out into the yard to start work.</p><p>“So?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“So?” replied Colm.</p><p>“You want me to act like I don’t know you heard?”</p><p>Colm looked at Aimé as he dug his trowel into the earth, twisting around the roots of a dandelion in a quick, calculated way and pulling it free, roots and all, to toss onto the compost heap. When his lopsided, mismatched eyes met Colm’s, Colm almost felt in a vague way that they looked very much like Jean’s, even though they didn’t – he was very aware, this morning, of the interconnectedness of everything, but it didn’t really make him feel better.</p><p>“You want to believe him,” said Colm, forcing a shrug, “believe him.”</p><p>“He’s lying?”</p><p>“He always lies. It’s what he does.”</p><p>“You never do what he said?” asked Aimé, in a sort of snide and easy way. He talked like Asmodeus sometimes, in a way that Colm didn’t like – Aimé could be distanced about things, curious about them, and even though Colm could feel that he wasn’t blank like Asmodeus was, it still pissed him off, somehow. Aimé didn’t <em>feel</em> snide, or smug – he felt curious, sad, a little angry and defensive on Jean’s behalf, but concerned for Colm as well. That pissed Colm off, too. “Pull his feelings out of him even when he tells you not to?”</p><p>“You know, there’s a point with people who aren’t rational where their consent is less important,” Colm replied. “Where you’re thinking about protecting them from themselves, or protecting other people from them. If you tried to slit your wrists again, and I dragged you out of the bath, you’d tell me not to, but I’d still set you down and tourniquet your arms.”</p><p>To his frustration, this blow didn’t land the way he wanted to, and he couldn’t tell if it was something he ordinarily would have misjudged or if it was just that he was still half-high.</p><p>Aimé gave him a condescending smile, like Colm was a kid who’d spoken out of turn, and said, “Except if you pulled me out of a bath it would be to stop me killing myself. How much of it with Jean is wanting to calm him down, and wanting to make it stop?”</p><p>“Calming him down is making it stop.”</p><p>“For him or you?”</p><p>“Funny,” Colm said. “Didn’t take you long to become an expert on all of us, did it?”</p><p>“Not saying I understand,” said Aimé, shrugging his shoulders. “But for all he cares about controlling other people, Jean goes to a lot of effort to make sure he doesn’t peek in other people’s heads.”</p><p>“Only because he can’t control his own fucking feelings, and acting like other people’s are real is too much for him,” Colm muttered irritably. “He’s never had a boyfriend wrapped around his fingers the way you are.”</p><p>“Not surprised,” said Aimé. “He doesn’t usually like to top.”</p><p>“Jesus,” Colm said disgustedly, but he was surprised by how he laughed, too, and Aimé smiled at him.</p><p>Colm wanted to keep being pissed at him, wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t really manage it even though he tried, couldn’t quite pull himself in that direction even though he wanted to. The anger simmered in him, instead, with no real direction to be aimed in.</p><p>“It’s not like I fucking wanted to listen,” Colm said in a low voice. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t turn it off the way that he does, and I don’t want to. It’s like… Sometimes, you know, he’ll go months where he keeps his wings folded up in his back, because he’s too busy working himself to the bone or getting too into something to groom them. When he finally sets them free, each digit is tangled up, his feathers are a mess, and he’s always covered in blood where the quills have torn and cut at him. It pisses us off, when he does it, but I know why he does it, because sometimes, it’s too much for him, and it’s me and De that set him right. Turning off the empathy is like that, too. Cramming something deep inside him, and when he finally lets it out again, he finds it’s too much.”</p><p>“It’s not like that,” Aimé said. “That’s like saying that De is repressing something when he wears his glasses, or that I’m repressing something because I’m not drinking all hours of the day anymore—”</p><p>“My empathy isn’t a fucking <em>mental deficiency</em>, Aimé—”</p><p>“I’m not saying it is,” retorted Aimé, “for <em>you</em>. But for Jean, it’s obviously—”</p><p>“Jean-Pierre has no fucking idea what’s best for him.”</p><p>“That’s exactly the problem,” Aimé said quietly, all serious, all of a sudden. “You thinking you know what’s best.”</p><p>“And who does?” asked Colm. “You? You’ve barely been here five fucking minutes, and De disappears for months out of the goddamn year—”</p><p>“Like you never disappear,” Aimé retorted. “You two argue – I know you two argue. You can’t fucking tell me you don’t, that you don’t go months, years without talking sometimes—”</p><p>“Only when he’s being so fucking crazy I can’t—”</p><p>“Don’t call him that.”</p><p>“What? Crazy? He fucking is, Aimé. It’s not the action of a sane man to whore himself out to a whole bar because his boyfriend got shot and he’s fucking sad about it. It’s not the action of a sane man to go fucking postal on his fucking fiancé in the middle of that fiancé’s <em>coronation</em>. I tell you what’s really not sane, to open his legs to a guy after trying to kill him at a party, and then going back <em>twice</em>, and the third time letting himself get fucking captured for however long, and then telling me <em>I’m</em> the bad guy like he didn’t go out asking for—”</p><p>“Don’t make me punch you, Colm,” said Aimé.</p><p>He said it calmly, his voice dull and quiet, but Colm could feel the rage burning off him, could feel that hot, hot cloud and it made his fingers twitch at his sides, made him want to fucking fight, because that’d get Aimé away from him and maybe get him to fucking quit this.</p><p>“You can’t handle that your boyfriend’s a slut?” Colm asked.</p><p>“It’s the 21<sup>st</sup> century, you know,” said Aimé. “I don’t give a shit what year you fell, he’s not a fucking slut because he got raped.”</p><p>“He knows what he’s asking for,” said Colm. “How do you not understand that by now? How do you not understand that he <em>knows</em> what he’s doing – he’s not stupid, Aimé, you fucking know that. He gets himself into these situations, gets himself in too deep, and then afterwards he says it’s too much for him and—”</p><p>“Is this why you think it doesn’t matter when he tells you no?” Aimé asked, and Colm knew he couldn’t punch him, knew that this was Aimé, that he couldn’t just lash out and break his nose for the umpteenth time because it wouldn’t heal like Jean-Pierre’s did, <em>knew</em>—</p><p>“In ainm Chroim,” Colm spat. “You’re calling me a fucking rapist because I don’t let my brother tantrum until he hurts himself?”</p><p>“They’re not fucking <em>tantrums</em>, Colm, he’s mentally fucking ill!”</p><p>Colm scoffed, crossed his hands over his chest, thought of Jean-Pierre wrapped in a straitjacket in a sanatorium somewhere and felt fucking sick with it, even as Aimé stood there with all his anger and his indignation, like he understood a fucking thing about it.</p><p>“Look,” said Colm, trying his best to stay calm, to stay collected, “I love Jean, Aimé, and I know you love him too, but he knows exactly what he’s doing most of the time. He’s never learned to control himself because he doesn’t <em>want</em> to fucking learn, he just doesn’t <em>try</em>, and why should he, when he keeps getting new idiot boyfriends who tell him he’s right about everything until they die off like fucking flies?”</p><p>He regretted that, and he was glad that it didn’t land as cuttingly as it could have: Aimé laughed, and it was a bitter sound as he leaned back on his heels, shaking his head.</p><p>“Well, fucking sorry, Colm,” he said dryly. “I’ll try my best to get out of your hair and die as soon as. God forbid someone other than De take his side between you two.”</p><p>“It’s not about sides,” said Colm. “You’ve never seen him really throw himself out, fly off the handle, because you don’t <em>get</em> it.”</p><p>“Well, I’m gonna have to learn to, aren’t I?” asked Aimé. “I like you, Colm. I like you a lot. But I’m not just gonna roll over and agree with you when you act like Jean-Pierre’s the fucking devil.”</p><p>“And who is he in your eyes?” Colm retorted. “One of the heavenly saints, never done a thing wrong?”</p><p>“He does things wrong all the time,” said Aimé. “I’m not a fucking priest, Colm, I’m not even a Catholic – I’m not trying to absolve him of shit.”</p><p>“Not going to church doesn’t mean you’re not a Catholic,” said Colm, and Aimé swore.</p><p>“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.</p><p>“Case in point,” Colm replied, and Aimé huffed out a helpless, irritable laugh, shaking his head. It didn’t make Colm smile this time – it just made the irritation coiling in him like a fucking spring coil tighter, and he spat on the floor as Jean-Pierre came out of the house, wrapped in Asmodeus’ dressing gown and a set of Aimé’s pyjamas.</p><p>“You look terrible,” he said to Colm, and there was no real intention in it, because he was still half asleep, thinking of the bags under Colm’s eyes and how pale he was – and his eyes weren’t just shadowed but a little red, too.</p><p>Colm shouldn’t have snapped, but Aimé was ready for it, and he caught Colm’s arm before it could go anywhere close to Jean-Pierre, but instead of making a scene about it, he leapt forward and shoved Colm down into the dirt.</p><p>Colm was surprised to find Aimé didn’t feel angry, or at least, not as angry as Colm did. There was anger there, sure, there was indignation, a desire to protect, but there was more than that. Frustration, the sort of simmering frustration he felt before a fight, and Aimé didn’t go to punch him, either.</p><p>“The fuck are you doing?” Colm asked, and Aimé kneed him in the side, making him wheeze: Colm shoved up against his throat, kicking Aimé in the hip and rolling them over, but Aimé grabbed him by the hair and rolled them right back.</p><p>He wasn’t as good at wrestling as he was at boxing, but he was far better than he had been at the beginning, and shoving at one another on the cold, damp earth was different to fighting in the ring.</p><p>“Your stamina’s better,” he said when they broke apart.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had gotten bored after a few minutes and gone inside, now curled up beside the fire with Peadar in his lap, and Colm felt better now, his heart beating faster in his chest, breathing a little heavier, a few new bruises already healing – Aimé was learning to hit harder, learning to fight harder, too.</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé said. “Between you and Jean. De isn’t going to teach me to fight too?”</p><p>“De doesn’t fight,” said Colm. “He’d teach you to dance if you asked him, though.”</p><p>“I don’t think I could do the whole tiptoe thing.”</p><p>“Not all ballet is en pointe,” said Colm. “Jean can do some ballet, you know. Not like De can, he doesn’t have the, um, the discipline, I guess? Or— or the passion for it that De does. He likes the cabaret shit that he does, singing, the dancing, but he doesn’t love it the way he loves ballet. Thank you.”</p><p>“What for?”</p><p>“Stopping me hitting him.”</p><p>“I wound you up,” said Aimé. “Wasn’t about to let you go at him.”</p><p>“You were doing it on purpose?”</p><p>“No shit I was,” said Aimé. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite, acting like he’s the only one between you has a temper, and acting this whole fucking time like he lies all the time and you always tell the truth.”</p><p>“I tell the truth,” said Colm.</p><p>“Like fuck you do.”</p><p>“You think he does?”</p><p>“Sometimes, yeah,” said Aimé. “And last night he was all but fucking sobbing because he was so scared I wouldn’t believe him – and the whole time, worried he couldn’t say anything, because he can’t even keep a fucking secret while you’re around.”</p><p>“Yeah,” muttered Colm. “The way Jean-Pierre sees it, I invade his privacy just by fucking existing.”</p><p>“You’re such an idiot,” muttered Aimé.</p><p>“I told you, Aimé, I can’t turn it off—”</p><p>“But he <em>can</em>, you prick,” Aimé muttered, sitting up. “He painted symbols on his chest to dampen his <em>own</em> empathy – you seriously think it never occurred to him to paint some to keep yours out?”</p><p>Colm felt something catch in his chest, felt like he’d fallen a height and then got stuck on a cord. He looked across at Aimé, who was staring up at the sky, which was grey and cold, much like the ground underneath them, the two of them lying shoulder-to-shoulder on it.</p><p> “He told you that?” Colm asked.</p><p>“No,” Aimé said. “But you’re not an enchanter. You don’t think like he does.”</p><p>“Like you do?”</p><p>“I don’t think like him,” said Aimé. “But I don’t assume he thinks like me, either.”</p><p>“What, you’re a fucking psychiatrist now?”</p><p>“Nah,” Aimé muttered. “I’m a philosopher. Way bigger piece of shit.”</p><p>Colm sniggered, and then said softly, “I fucking love him, Aimé. He’s my brother, and I love him, but I can’t… I can’t just fucking pretend it’s okay.”</p><p>“I think you pretending it’s okay is kind of the problem,” said Aimé, and pulled himself up to sit. “I’m going to get breakfast with him – I’ll come back out and help you after. Okay?”</p><p>“Okay,” murmured Colm, and hesitated a second before he patted Aimé’s shoulder. “You’re, uh. I’ve never really been friends with one of his boyfriends before, you know. I liked some of them, but I was never, uh, never close. De was with Farhad, and with, uh, with Jules, but I never…”</p><p>“We close?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“I’m not going to let you suck my dick, if that’s what you’re asking.”</p><p>“Aw, really?” asked Aimé, mock-disappointed. “Even if I say le do thoil arís?”</p><p>“You look that up?”</p><p>“Figured it’d come in useful. You feel better?”</p><p>“Yeah. Make sure he does too, would you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Aimé softly, and pulled himself to his feet.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>Wrapped in a blanket with one of the outdoor heaters on beside him, Jean-Pierre sits with Snowman, the Agarwals’ pet cat, in his lap. She had hopped over the fence and sat beside the heater to devour the shrew she had captured somewhere else in the neighbourhood, and when Jean-Pierre patted his knees, she had considered him sceptically before hopping onto them and curling into a ball.</p><p>Her fur is a great deal sleeker than Peadar’s, and she doesn’t have nearly so many matts – he uploads a selfie into the neighbourhood group and tags Snowman’s owner, Sushmita, but kindly makes no mention of the rodent he’d watcher her eat.</p><p>Colm and Aimé had wrestled earlier, but to Jean-Pierre’s distant surprise, Colm seems to be in a far better mood than he ordinarily would be, and although he stank of cannabis smoke, he didn’t seem to actually be all that high.</p><p>He and Aimé were working closely together on the garden and in the greenhouse, and chattering vaguely about work Colm had used to do in someone’s greenhouses a century ago, talking about magical varieties of roses.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was scrolling through Gavin Swift’s social media, idly examining the various photographs up of himself at parties, at the beach on a holiday, a few photos of him at other society events. He was shirtless in the photos more often than not, and he had big shoulders, sculpted abs, hefty pectorals.</p><p>His friends, the ones he was room mates with, were each handsome as well, and while none of them met Gavin from for height and likely not for cock size either, they were each fairly big men, each of them gym fanatics in their own right.</p><p>“Whatcha looking at?” asked Aimé, reaching out and scratching Snowman’s ears, making her purr out a chirruping sound.</p><p>“The man in my choir,” said Jean-Pierre, and turned the phone around so that Aimé could examine a photograph of Gavin Swift drunk at a rave in Ibiza. For all the red eye in the photo and the glowsticks around his wrists and neck, his abs shone with sweat in the light, and his swimming shorts were soaked through so that you could see the bulge of his cock against his thigh.</p><p>“Nice,” Aimé said mildly. “We can go to that social you said about in January, work him over then.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt himself smile slightly, shifting in his seat. “Work him over?” he repeats, and he giggles at the way Aimé grins.</p><p>From the other side of the house, Jean-Pierre heard a loud, powerful voice call, “Onè!”</p><p>He grinned wider, looking to Colm as he dropped his tools and stands, and the two of them called back, “Respè!”</p><p>Snowman, full of distaste at all this unnecessary noise, hopped from his lap and rushed off, and Jean-Pierre tugged Aimé by the hand through the house and out to the front yard, where Benedictine was approaching the door.</p><p>He leapt into her arms and she caught him, laughing at she kissed his cheeks and then dropped him aside, moving to kiss Colm too. Aimé went to the car, pulling open the boot and taking Benedictine’s case out for her as Jean-Pierre and Colm turned to speak with her.</p><p>“How was the flight?” asked Colm.</p><p>“Okay,” Benedictine said, shrugging. She was wearing an old uniform that she often wore as a travel suit, and her hair was loosely tied up over her head in a messy bun, a headscarf keeping the thick curls out of her face. “You’re growing your hair out,” she said to Jean-Pierre, reaching out and tugging on a lock of it.</p><p>“Not so much,” Jean-Pierre said.</p><p>“You need a haircut,” she said disapprovingly, curling it around her fingers, and Jean-Pierre smiled at her. “De, you aren’t cutting it?”</p><p>“Hold him down, and I will,” said Asmodeus with a warm, honeyed affection, and Jean-Pierre scowled.</p><p>“<em>And</em>,” he said, taking Benedictine’s hand and gesturing, “this is Aimé.”</p><p>Aimé set Benedictine’s backpack and her suitcase down to offer a hand to shake, but before she took it, she examined him critically, looking him up and down. Jean-Pierre felt a sort of clench in his chest at the way Benedictine’s lip curled up as she took him in.</p><p>“We weren’t speaking French, idiot,” said Colm, switching to English. “It’s Creole.”</p><p>Aimé coloured. “I knew that,” he said loudly, and Jean-Pierre swallowed back his snigger as Benedictine took his hand, squeezing it hard as she shook it. “I’m Aimé Deverell. You’re Benedictine, you sent Jean the t-shirt.”</p><p>“T-shirt?” Benedictine repeated.</p><p>“The one with the Haitian flag,” said Aimé. “He doesn’t wear t-shirts often, but that one’s good.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre felt himself go pink as Benedictine looked at him sideways, and she laughed, dragging Aimé by his hand and pulling him into a hug. Aimé laughed, surprised, but he hugged her back, and he didn’t flinch away when she put her hand on the side of his face, ostensibly feeling his stubble but also touching the place where his jaw had been wired back into place, her fingers tracing the scars there.</p><p>“You don’t look like any of the others,” said Benedictine.</p><p>“I’m ugly, you mean,” said Aimé, and she laughed.</p><p>“You look strong,” she said. “Hardy. You can take a punch – can you take a bullet?”</p><p>“I don’t know yet,” said Aimé. “I’d like to put off testing if I can, though, if it’s okay with you.”</p><p>“Your dick big?”</p><p>“Bene!” Jean-Pierre protested, but Aimé didn’t back down, keeping his gaze on Benedictine’s, lips curled up into one of his lopsided smirks.</p><p>“Bigger than yours,” he said, and she grinned back.</p><p>“Bet?”</p><p>“I bet.”</p><p>“You take care of my brother?”</p><p>“You’re fucking right I do.”</p><p>Benedictine let go of his hand, and leaned slightly back. “You don’t have to be my bag boy.”</p><p>“Failté,” said Aimé, and Benedictine laughed, slapping his shoulder.</p><p>“I told you you’d like him,” said Asmodeus smoothly. “Let’s everyone inside, shall we?”</p><p>She approved, which Jean-Pierre liked, but he also knew damn well that she’d touch his boyfriends just to piss him off, and he made sure to slide between Aimé and Bene as they all walked inside.</p><p>“Food?” Aimé asked in Jean-Pierre’s ear as they moved inside, and Jean-Pierre nodded his head. “Okay,” he said, and kissed the back of his neck as he went to set Benedictine’s bags aside for her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0039"><h2>39. Tetanus Shot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>They pulled out the table to sit down together once the Chinese came an hour later, and just as Aimé sat down, he heard a distant yowl from outside.</p><p>“You get it,” he said to Jean-Pierre, he was cutting into one of the cactus fruits Aimé hadn’t seen before, a juicier once that didn’t have the same strange creamy centre the dragon fruits did.</p><p>“Aimé,” complained Jean-Pierre, and Aimé sighed, getting to his feet and moving to the door. Peadar ran in, but a familiar streak of white followed quickly at his heels, and Aimé tried to grab for Peadar before he could get away, but Peadar was already sprinting under the dining table and into the kitchen, dribbling blood as he went.</p><p>“<em>In ainm—</em> Peadar!” Colm growled.</p><p>“Haven’t heard that one before,” said Aimé, grabbing Snowman under her arms and lifting her clean off the ground, even as she hissed and growled at him for daring to touch her. He let out a sharp noise of pain as one of her back feet dug into his arm, squeezing her tightly to stop her from wriggling free, but she only dug in harder. “You little bitch,” he snapped, looking where to toss her down so that she wouldn’t chase after Colm and Peadar, who had disappeared through the side door.</p><p>“Give her here,” said Asmodeus, scooping Snowman from his arms, and Aimé watched the way he held her, gripping loosely as the scruff of her neck so that she froze like a rabbit, ears back. She seemed to consider scratching De, but Aimé could see her think better of it, and as Colm kept shouting at Peadar, Asmodeus disappeared, presumably to return Snowman to her home, and Aimé looked at his arm and made a face.</p><p>She’d gouged a heavy scratch into his arm and the blood that bubbled to the surface was thick and darker than he’d like, and Aimé kept his arm high as he stepped around the counter to run it under the sink. Jean already had the first aid kit out.</p><p>“Do I need stitches?” he asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Only through your mouth,” said l’ange with a sort of forced casual air, tugging Aimé by the wrist so that the scratch in his forearm was directly under the flow of the tap. Aimé winced at the sting of the cold water. “If it doesn’t scab I’ll stitch it – it’s a larger gash than I’d like, I grant you, but I think it will coagulate itself if you leave it a moment. Are you up to date on your tetanus vaccinations?”</p><p>“<em>Tetanus</em>?” Aimé repeated, feeling panic rise in his chest, and Jean-Pierre let out a dismissive sound, wiping antiseptic soap over the cut and making him let out a grumbled sound of pain. He tapped his foot on the ground to keep himself still as Jean-Pierre held his wrist in place and flipped off the tap and replaced the antiseptic wipe with a bandage pad and wrapped it in gauze.</p><p>“I’ll give you a tetanus shot,” said Jean-Pierre, but Aimé was too distracted to respond: Jean-Pierre’s hands were rapid tying up the bandage around his arm, so quickly Aimé almost felt like his vision should blur to see it.</p><p>“Does Snowman have tetanus?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“It’s a precaution,” said Jean-Pierre comfortingly, cupping Aimé’s cheek and brushing their noses together as Aimé wiggled his fingers, but when he tried to put his arm down Jean-Pierre caught him by the elbow and pushed his hand back up, and obediently, Aimé kept his arm in the air. “She’s an outdoor cat and she plays in the earth, that’s all.”</p><p>“Does Peadar need a tetanus shot?” Aimé asked, gesturing to the blood on the floor, a mix of his own and what Peadar had tracked in.</p><p>“I don’t think that’s Peadar’s blood, actually,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé felt himself frown until he turned to look at Colm, who holding a cheerfully purring Peadar against his chest with one arm, his fingers wrapped around Peadar’s furry chest, and his other hand was smeared with blood.</p><p>Aimé turned on the sink for him, and as Colm came to put his hand under the flow of the sink, Aimé put soap on his hands for him as Jean-Pierre took the cat, although his own hands were still damp from washing his own a second ago.</p><p>As Jean-Pierre wiped Peadar’s mouth and the blood off of the ruff of his chest, Aimé watched Colm wash his hands.</p><p>“Another bird?” he asked, although he was genuinely relieved that Peadar didn’t look at all harmed. He cared about the little bastard, and Peadar was showing no shame at all, kneading into the sofa and against Jean-Pierre’s knees, purring proudly.</p><p>“Rat,” said Colm. “It was already dead, so I’ve put it aside, I’ll toss it after dinner. Another theft, I think. Peadar’s not as good at hunting as Snowman, needs to steal someone else’s kills. No wonder the two of you get on so well, Jean.”</p><p>“I steal nothing,” said Jean-Pierre primly, but Aimé didn’t miss the ice in it. “If you can’t kill a man before I can, Colm, that’s to do with your inefficiency, not mine.”</p><p>Colm scoffed, and he turned Aimé’s arm toward him where he was holding it up in the air. The bandage was a little pink, and by no means did it feel like the wound was healing yet.</p><p>“You don’t think he’ll need stitches?” he asked Jean-Pierre, and Aimé groaned.</p><p>“I’m about to get my kit,” said Jean-Pierre, pushing Peadar off his lap, and Asmodeus came in, now without Snowman to hand. “Did the Agarwals scold him?”</p><p>“They did indeed,” said Asmodeus idly. “Enjoy our bit of community theatre, Benedictine?”</p><p>Benedictine had not moved from her chair for all of this: she sat back in her seat, her knees spread apart, a bottle of beer in her hand, and she grinned at them, raising it in a toast.</p><p>“Very entertaining,” she said cheerfully.</p><p>She didn’t look at all surprised, and Aimé watched the slight smile tug at her lips.</p><p>“Is it always like this with them?” he asked, gesturing with his healthy arm, and Benedictine laughed.</p><p>“With you too, now,” she said, and Aimé shook his head.</p><p>The blood was seeping through the bandage, dripping down his arm, and Asmodeus took him by the shoulders and pushed him back toward the sink.</p><p>Jean-Pierre brought a lamp down with him to work by, and once Colm had spread cling-film on the kitchen counter, Aimé half sat on a chair at the counter and laid his arm down over the plastic, and as Jean-Pierre washed his hands again he cut off the bandage with Jean-Pierre’s surgical scissors, grabbing another piece of surgical padding, holding it down hard against the cut.</p><p>“You said you wouldn’t lie to me,” he said quietly as Jean-Pierre crossed around the table, taking up a needle. “You knew first glance I’d need a needle in me.”</p><p>“Perhaps I have faith in your powers of coagulation,” said Jean-Pierre. “Do you want an analgesic?”</p><p>“For two or three stitches? No, don’t waste it.”</p><p>Colm glanced up from the table, making to get up. “I can—”</p><p>“I don’t need that, either,” said Aimé, waving his other hand. “I’ve had way worse than a cat scratch.”</p><p>“You’ve got a few, really,” Jean-Pierre pointed out, touching his fingers over the various grazes around the deeper cut. “I think she got you with her back claw. It’s longer than the others – she uses it to climb.”</p><p>“Good for her,” muttered Aimé, and wrinkled his nose as Jean-Pierre slid an antiseptic wipe over the cut again. Like he was with the bandage, Jean-Pierre was quick, smooth, and efficient: Aimé felt the pinching pain of the needle slide through his skin, the pinch, the pull, the dull pain mixed with the sharp. “Bet your work is much neater than the last doctor who sewed my wrists shut.”</p><p>“My work is unparalleled,” said Jean-Pierre, snipping off the end of the thread and stroking over the stitched wound, making sure it was properly closed, before getting another bandage. “But I must confess a certain gratitude to my predecessor.”</p><p>Aimé laughed quietly and extended his fingers, clenching them slightly.</p><p>“You want the injection in your arm or your backside?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Dealer’s choice,” was Aimé’s reply, and Jean-Pierre smiled at him, taking up the syringe from the tray and leaning forward to push up Aimé’s arm. Looking past Jean-Pierre, Aimé could see that Peadar was sprawled on his back on the sofa, still looking pleased with himself.</p><p>It hurt, probably a little worse than the stitches, although it didn’t last long, and he lifted his arm up for Jean-Pierre to bandage his arm again.</p><p>“You can do it yourself,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“I like how you do it,” murmured Aimé, and l’ange’s smile was all pretty teeth as he took up the gauze. Again, his hands moved quick, sudden, easy. “Merci. Vraiment gentil, <em>docteur</em>.”</p><p>“Fuck yourself,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Now?” asked Aimé, and Jean laughed, pulling Aimé’s hand up to his mouth and kissing the scars on his wrist before he kissed the centre of the bandage.</p><p>The others had been talking as they ate, and when they sat down again at the table, Asmodeus reached across and put his hand in Jean-Pierre’s hair, fingers combing through it.</p><p>Benedictine, unlike Jean-Pierre, was actually eating from the Chinese – she had a few wontons, although Aimé noticed she’d crumbled away half the batter on each one, but mostly she ate rice and plucked some of the beef from Colm’s plate as well eating fruit.</p><p>“So,” said Aimé. “L’ange says you’re a lawyer.”</p><p>“We’re all l’ange,” pointed out Benedictine.</p><p>“Nah,” said Aimé. “Not like he is.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s cheeks turned a delicate pink, and he smiled as he looked back to his food. Colm made an exaggerated gagging sound, and Aimé laughed, kicking him under the table.</p><p>“Disgusting,” agreed Benedictine, and Aimé grinned, pouring more wine for Asmodeus as well as himself. “I am a lawyer, mostly my bills are paid by property disputes and civil proceedings between blans, but I do pro bono work on the side.”</p><p>“Whites?” repeated Aimé.</p><p>“Rich people,” said Benedictine. “White, most of them, but not all. I work in Port-au-Prince, so there’s more of them than elsewhere.”</p><p>“Thought we hated the rich,” said Aimé.</p><p>“We, he says,” said Colm dryly.</p><p>Aimé sniggered, as Benedictine said, but she was looking at him with interest, studying him like he’d said something interesting. “You don’t know what we do,” she said musingly, taking a sip of her beer.</p><p>“I know you kill people,” said Aimé. He struggled to keep the sarcasm out of his voice as he said, “Fierce revolutionaries, all of you.”</p><p>“Where did you find him?” she asked Jean.</p><p>“In the park,” he said.</p><p>She clucked her tongue, laughing, and shook her head. “Let me guess, Aimé. You think that my brothers, they go from this house, they kill people because they hate the rich or the influential. You think they impart justice, they act as executioners, and no thought further is made of it. This is correct?”</p><p>In the same way that Jean and Colm did, Benedictine had a strong accent, and he didn’t know if it was right for Port-au-Prince, if it was a common accent, if it was a rich one or a poor one, if she sounded like Colm, like Haiti’s equivalent of a culchie, or if she sounded like Jean-Pierre, prissy and superior, educated in the city. It was Haitian, he was pretty sure, but even that he wasn’t certain on, because he didn’t think he could tell the difference, if someone pressed him, the exact difference between a Haitian accent and a Jamaican one or a Trinidadian one, if he listened to them blind. He thought he could tell them apart, but would be able to explain why?</p><p>He didn’t think so.</p><p>The fact that he didn’t know, he realised, bothered him, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could ask – not because it was impolite, which he guessed it was, but because it wouldn’t satisfy him, to ask. He didn’t want to rely on Colm telling him – he wanted to <em>know</em>, himself, wanted to be able to hear it, wanted to be able to tell himself, without anyone holding his hand.</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Aimé. “I know they kill people. I know they compare points, after. They think it’s a game, both of them. I believe they think it’s important – I also believe they think it’s fun.”</p><p>Neither Jean-Pierre or Colm looked upset that he said this, and if they had, he wouldn’t have taken it back. Colm was listening intently, but there was amusement showing on his face as well, his lips shifted in a slight smile, and Jean-Pierre was smiling without shame, sipping at his fruit juice.</p><p>“It’s both,” said Benedictine. “But it isn’t just <em>their</em> game. In this matter, I am my brothers’ general, Aimé. I give them their marching orders, I choose their targets. From time to time, they may take on something else, but it is me and my team who decides the bulk of their work.”</p><p>“Work,” said Aimé dryly, and he wasn’t as disgusted as he would have been, once upon a time, wasn’t quite as haughty or superior as he knew he’d have been, months ago. “You kill people – maybe they deserve to die, I don’t know. Child traffickers or politicians or whoever else, I don’t fucking know.”</p><p>“You have him between your legs all this time,” Benedictine asked Jean-Pierre, again, without looking at Aimé, and Aimé was reminded of the way Doros and Aetos had spoken about him back at Halloween, “and you teach him nothing?”</p><p>“I’ve told him the concept before,” Jean-Pierre said, shrugging. “He may not have applied the knowledge.”</p><p>“Aimé,” said Benedictine. “You see a monarchy before you, and you wish to tear it down. Who do you kill?”</p><p>“All of them,” said Aimé. “That’s the answer you want?”</p><p>“It’s a good answer,” said Colm, and Benedictine laughed.</p><p>“Who do you kill first?” she asked. “The king? His wife? Someone else entirely – the duke, a courtier, the president, who?”</p><p>“His direct descendants,” said Aimé slowly, remembering what Jean-Pierre had told him when they were talking about Rupert, and when Jean-Pierre looked at him approvingly, he shifted slightly in his chair. It was hot that he approved – it shouldn’t have been. “You muddy the waters for the line of succession. That way, when the king dies, everything takes longer.”</p><p>“It’s like a tower of dominos,” said Benedictine mildly. “Let them fall, and they go down one by one, predictable, a line of cause and effect. But take out a few key pieces and you can make the whole thing come apart at once, collapse like Babel.”</p><p>Asmodeus didn’t say anything, but he picked up the wine bottle and poured the last of it into his glass.</p><p>“That’s the work we do. We are adjacent to the Embassy, me, a handful of other angels in Haiti, others in other countries, cities. We do our research on certain networks of people – organisations of power. Monarchies, governments, companies, criminal enterprises, too. We pick on certain areas of weakness, the better to destabilise the whole.</p><p>“It is a process that occurs in parts: research is done, spies and double agents used if necessary, so that we can be best aware of certain pressure points. Some of them are disgraced or made to leave their posts, others are killed. Once an organisation is unsteady, communication within it disrupted, its walls weakened, we pick off the rest. We pick it apart, we cannibalise it. We make use of the resources, or pass them out to those who need them, strengthen the communities that have been harmed.”</p><p>She talked like a lawyer, Aimé thought. Or— Maybe she didn’t, he didn’t know: she talked like someone who was good at talking, who was good at explaining things in ways that people could easily understand.</p><p>Aimé liked her.</p><p>“A strong community,” said Benedictine, “is the strongest defence against a concentration of power.”</p><p>“Communism,” said Aimé.</p><p>“Mm. Anarchy. Socialism. Communism. There are a lot of ideological labels you might use, a lot of theory. You might find in me both my brothers’ strengths and defects, Aimé – like Jean I have read my theory, I have studied, but like Colm, I see that theory has its limits.”</p><p>“That make you the chief or the guide?” asked Aimé quietly, and watched Benedictine raise her chin slightly. “I thought you were the general.”</p><p>“He reads books,” she said, once again, to Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“He’s serious,” said Jean-Pierre, gesturing with his chin for her to look at Aimé instead of him, and Aimé felt a kind of warmth in his chest, a sense of certainty, security.</p><p>“I am wild,” replied Aimé, and he reached for Jean’s hand across the table when l’ange smiled at him, interlinking their fingers.</p><p>“What the <em>fuck</em> are you talking about?” demanded Colm, and even Asmodeus laughed, although his quiet chuckle wasn’t as obvious as the rest of their laughter.</p><p>“It’s Hugo,” said Benedictine.</p><p>“Right,” Colm muttered. “Aimé know you fuck him?”</p><p>“I figured it out,” said Aimé dryly, and Jean-Pierre squeezed his hand before leaning away, wrapping his arms around Peadar as he hopped into his lap to keep him from climbing on the table. “So how many angels do this?”</p><p>“Not too many,” said Benedictine. “A few hundred of us. We don’t end empires, we don’t even take on too large targets.” She glanced at Asmodeus as she said this, and Asmodeus set down his wine glass, drumming elegant fingers against its rim.</p><p>“There is support for this particular movement of angels within the Embassy,” said Asmodeus quietly, “but there is no official support of it. Were there to be, it would destabilise a lot of dealings with magical governments, organisations. We are in many ways, Aimé, our own nation, a tribe of sorts, and are treated as such, but we are also individuals who Fall individually. The Embassy is in many ways more similar to a union than a government – and yet again, like a village council. We are both small and large, sprawling and contained, and within our boundaries – if there are boundaries – there are as many differing opinions, worldviews, beliefs, as there are without.”</p><p>Asmodeus was solemn as he spoke, his eyes for a moment appearing to be very distant as he paused, and then he met Aimé’s gaze, and said, “Comparisons are made between angels and human diaspora, or to vampires, or to fae, or demons, even. But all of them, even those latter two, are native to this planet – the dimensions change, layer, but they are all of the same earth, or parallel. We’re extra-terrestrial, Aimé, in the most literal sense of the word: because of this nature of ours our position anywhere is precarious, no matter how powerful we might sometimes feel we are.”</p><p>This last was said quite sternly, Asmodeus’ expression severe, and Aimé was fascinated at the response it garnered.</p><p>Colm hurriedly stood up from his seat, beginning to take up empty plates to put in the sink, and Benedictine focused on drinking her beer, rummaging in her pockets for a lighter. Jean-Pierre didn’t look away like they did, but looked straight at Asmodeus, and Aimé watched the expression on his face, his lips downturned, his brow furrowed.</p><p>It wasn’t just shame in that face, but pain, and after keeping his brother’s gaze for a few seconds Jean-Pierre gathered Peadar up in his arms and buried his face in the back of his neck.</p><p>Aimé stood to start packing the leftovers away, passing the empty plates to Colm behind him.</p><p>“Must you?” asked Jean-Pierre darkly.</p><p>“I don’t have to,” said Benedictine. “But I’m going to. Share, De?”</p><p>“I’ll partake,” said Asmodeus, standing to his feet, and although Jean-Pierre was sulking as Peadar rushed out of his lap, hopping up on the sofa to try to look over the counter to see if Aimé might share any of the leftovers, he bent to kiss the top of his head. “I’ll get rid of the smell,” he promised.</p><p>“You won’t,” said Jean irritable.</p><p>A hand slid down Aimé’s lower back, cupping his ass, and he thought it was Colm taking the piss until the cigar came into view.</p><p>“My brother make it so you can’t?” asked Benedictine, her fingers sliding into his back pocket, and he took her hand by the wrist, pulling it free.</p><p>“Better not,” said Aimé, and Benedictine laughed as she leaned back from him. It was a great smile, gap-toothed and wonderful, expressive.</p><p>Every angel he met had a face that just asked to be painted.</p><p>As Benedictine drew away, Aimé’s gaze flitted down to her arse, which well filled out her trousers, tailored to her hips and legs. It was a good arse, big—</p><p>And Jean-Pierre’s hand was around his throat, crowding him back against the counter, their chests together, so that he was looking down at Aimé. He looked furious, lip curled back in a snarl, and Aimé tugged his arm down to make it easier to lean up and kiss him.</p><p>Jean-Pierre rewarded him with a bite, but it wasn’t hard enough to draw blood, and it was good, bruising, possessive in a way Aimé had already learned to like.</p><p>“You’re mine,” Jean-Pierre reminded him.</p><p>“She touched me,” said Aimé.</p><p>“But you looked at her.”</p><p>“Colm, did I think about touching her?”</p><p>“No,” said Colm.</p><p>“No,” agreed Aimé.</p><p>Jean-Pierre slid his hands down Aimé’s sides, squeezing his hips. “She touches my things,” he said. “She knows it upsets me.”</p><p>“Am I one of your things?” asked Aimé.</p><p>Jean-Pierre looked at him like he’d said something ridiculous, and Aimé snorted before kissing him again.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>“Tell me what the Hugo thing was?” Colm asked very quietly that morning on the stairs when Aimé came out of Jean’s room, still drying off his hair. Jean was already downstairs, and Aimé guessed that was why Colm was asking now.</p><p>“It’s from <em>Les Misérables</em>,” said Aimé. “I compared Jean to one of the students before, that’s all. But there’s a bit where one character says, “Be serious,” and the other one says, “I am wild.” That’s all. It wasn’t a big thing you missed or anything.”</p><p>Colm grunted, giving a stout nod of his head.</p><p>“It’s not a big deal,” Aimé said again. “I know you don’t read as much, and the book’s a brick, no one cares you haven’t read it.”</p><p>Colm gave Aimé a thin, flat smile. “<em>You</em> don’t care,” he said quietly, still speaking lowly. “Bene and Jean do.”</p><p>“You want me to say something?” asked Aimé, and Colm actually blinked at him, surprised, and then the seriousness kind of went out of him a bit, his shoulders loosening.</p><p>“We all gang up on each other,” he said. “A little. It’s okay, I can look after myself. I just don’t like not knowing.” Colm patted Aimé’s arm, and Aimé nodded, following Colm down the stairs.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was in the kitchen, picking at a fruit plate, and Asmodeus was scooted forward on the chair closest to the fire, and Benedictine was sitting back between his knees, scrolling on her phone as Asmodeus carefully braided her hair, regularly dipping his fingers into a tray of something on the little table next to him and working it into the hair.</p><p>Benedictine has thick hair – Aimé didn’t know much about hair in general, didn’t think he’d be able to braid Jean’s hair without someone teaching him how, but how Asmodeus did it with Benedictine’s hair, which was made of extremely tight, thick coils, he didn’t know.</p><p>“You’re not doing them tight enough,” said Benedictine.</p><p>“I have been braiding hair far longer and far thicker than yours since millennia before you Fell,” said Asmodeus dryly. “And in far thinner braids, I might note – once I put the braids together, they <em>will</em> be tight, I’m leaving give on purpose—"</p><p>“I know,” said Benedictine. “I’m not saying do it as tight as you can, I’m just saying, you need to do it ti—”</p><p>“Do you want one of the white boys to do your hair?” asked Asmodeus. “I’m sure Colm has improved since last he tried.”</p><p>“He can’t have gotten worse,” said Jean-Pierre, and Colm shoved him in the back of the head as he picked bacon and sausages out of the fridge, making him laugh.</p><p>“Thank you, Asmodeus, please continue,” said Benedictine pointedly, and Asmodeus dipped his fingers in the tray, working something through the braid and continuing to work.</p><p>Aimé was watching closely, he knew, but he didn’t think about whether he was staring until Benedictine looked up at him.</p><p>“Will you do mine next?” he asked, and Benedictine laughed as Asmodeus gave him a sardonic look.</p><p>“Grow yours out, and we’ll give it a try,” he said in a very dry tones, and Aimé dropped back onto the couch. “It’s a hair product that I was taught to make a very long time ago,” he said, when he saw Aimé looking at the tray. “Keeps the hair soft.”</p><p>Aimé nodded slowly.</p><p>“Can I ask a question?” he asked.</p><p>“Always,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“I’m white,” said Aimé. “Colm and Jean are too?”</p><p>“He blind?” asked Benedictine, but Asmodeus only gave him a strange, distantly baffled look, as though he didn’t understand the question.</p><p>“I mean, you’re all angels,” said Aimé. “Doesn’t that supersede everything else?”</p><p>“Not at the airport,” said Asmodeus, arching one eyebrow. “Or anywhere else, for that matter. You, Bene?”</p><p>“Seems like people notice, yeah,” said Benedictine, and Aimé leaned back, arms crossed loosely over his chest. “What, you think we don’t count?”</p><p>“I guess I thought it wouldn’t matter,” said Aimé. “I mean, people are scared of angels, they respect you. Why would it matter what colour you are?”</p><p>“Because we live on Earth?” asked Benedictine. “You think Colm and Jean-Pierre are Irish and French, you think I am Haitian – but you don’t think I’m Black?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Aimé said.</p><p>“You don’t know much,” said Benedictine.</p><p>“No,” Aimé agreed, and she laughed, but she still looked annoyed, and as he got up to pour himself coffee, he brought the cafetiere over to refresh her and De, too. “You’re right. I guess I just didn’t think about it like that, with the thing about you guys being aliens.”</p><p>“Race is a social construct,” said Asmodeus, not looking up from his work. “But that doesn’t mean it fails to have influence over our interactions – angels are not exempt from that, any more than sorcerers or vampires or anyone else. We have what appear to be human bodies, and the features of these bodies are recognised, interpreted, just as any human’s are – often, with prejudice.”</p><p>“It’s part of how Colm and I can be useful to Benedictine,” said Jean-Pierre, resting his chin on his hand and sprawling over the kitchen counter. “More so, used to be, especially a little in Haiti, during the Revolution, the US, other places.”</p><p>“Him especially,” Colm said. “I look Irish, used to be more of a problem. He’s a Nazi poster boy.”</p><p>“You’re gonna let him say that,” asked Benedictine, watching Jean, “with where <em>he’s</em> coming from, Nazi-wise?”</p><p>Aimé watched Jean-Pierre frown, stiffening, watched him turn to glance at Colm as Colm stood up straight, and said, a little more loudly than he was going to, “So you just Fall in a random body of a random race?”</p><p>“I wasn’t aware humans were given access to design options that we were not,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“I don’t mean that, I know you don’t pick,” said Aimé. “But like. George, right, he looks Indian, and he fell this year, fine, there’s plenty of other Asian people in Ireland, but Pádraic and Bedelia look Indian, and Pádraic Fell like, nearly a thousand years ago. So, does he look like other Indian people who were in Ireland or around here at the time, or did he Fall in the wrong place, or what?”</p><p>“People have always travelled more widely than you might think,” said Asmodeus, shrugging his shoulders. “I believe at the time the monks assumed him to be from a far-off land, but times were different. I’m not saying he didn’t face ever face prejudice, but you’d have to ask him about it. The world has always been the same size, but the extent of it a person saw used to be so very modest, until recently – people would rarely know the whole of what we now think of as a country, let alone other countries.”</p><p>“Do you think that angels are based on human bodies or vice versa?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Subject of fierce debate,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“What do <em>you</em> think?” asked Aimé. Benedictine’s irritation seemed to have faded a little, because she was attending this conversation with interest, but it didn’t seem to Aimé like De was going to answer, and before he could, Jean interrupted.</p><p>“We’re all made in the image of God,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Does God have two wings and a tight—”</p><p> “Aimé, I’ll fucking smack you,” said Colm sharply, and Aimé drew off, leaning back on the sofa and spreading his hands even as Jean-Pierre grinned at him, and Benedictine laughed quietly as Asmodeus finished one of the thick braids, starting on another.</p><p>“Does it hurt?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Not the way he does it,” said Benedictine. “It’s supposed to.”</p><p>“It doesn’t need to,” Asmodeus said quietly, hands still smooth and quick as he worked through her hair. “You know I don’t like to hurt you.” Benedictine reached back, patting one of her brother’s ankles, and he leaned her head slightly to the side, giving Asmodeus a better angle.</p><p>“Will you cut mine today too?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“You’re <em>asking</em> me?” Asmodeus asked, whistling under his breath. “Goodness. It <em>is</em> Christmas.”</p><p>Aimé breathed in some of his coffee, and coughed it into his sleeve.</p><p>“Help me make breakfast, Aimé,” said Colm, and Aimé pulled himself up from the sofa.</p><p>“Jean says you’re an artist,” said Benedictine.</p><p>“Yeah, I paint with oils.”</p><p>“Tell me about it.”</p><p>Aimé felt himself smile slightly as he glanced over to Benedictine, then turned to wash his hands as he answered.</p><p>It was nice, to be asked.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>It wasn’t the only time he was contracted as sous chef that day. In the late afternoon, Pádraic, Colm, Benedictine, and George went out on an afternoon fishing expedition together, and when Bedelia text to ask if he’d help her cook for tonight, he didn’t have anything better to do.</p><p>He liked cooking with Bedelia – she knew her way around the kitchen, seemed to know about six thousand recipes off the top of her head, different cocktails of spice mixes and seasonings. She was funny, too, a mix of cheerful and cutting, and she was patient when he didn’t know how to do something.</p><p>He was chopping vegetables as she folded pastries – they were a sweet thing with layered fruit and puff pastry, all made with homemade hedgerow jam they’d made in September.</p><p>“You glad for the holidays?” Aimé asked, and Bedelia nodded her head, not looking up from her work as she concentrated on putting her layers on top of one another, the very tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth.</p><p>“Yeah,” she said. “The workload’s a little heavier than I expected – I didn’t think anything could be worse than the stress of leaving cert, but I think I’m good at cramming. I’m not as good keeping everything spread out and even. Do you have that problem?”</p><p>“Not really,” said Aimé. “But I drank my way out of one degree and through another, so maybe I’m not a great reference.”</p><p>Bedelia laughed, picking up the jam again.</p><p>“It’ll get easier,” said Aimé. “The years will get heavier as you get more into your degree, but you’ll figure out what works for you too. And you can use Jean for a lot of stuff, too. You know he won’t think anything of giving you his flashcards or showing you how he does them.”</p><p>“I don’t understand how he remembers everything,” said Bedelia quietly. “It’s weird, you know – when I was a little girl, I knew that Daddy was old, older than everyone else’s parents at school, and not just the mundie parents, but the magical ones too. I always knew logically how old angels were – I’d seen the pictures, Asmodeus would visit, and I know some of Daddy’s old friends, too, other angels, fae, that are all… old. But now I think about how, you know, me and George, we’re both young, but I’m only nineteen, and he’s— he’s <em>new</em>, and we’re at the start of our lives, but they’ll just keep going. When Jean-Pierre helps me, I’m grateful, of course, but just that he’s done this so many times, that he keeps it all in his head, it makes <em>me</em> think my head’s going to crack in two.”</p><p>Aimé nodded his head, and Bedelia leaned back on her slippered feet, biting her lip as she looked at him.</p><p>“Sorry,” she said.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Well, you know, you’re…”</p><p>He laughed. “Oh, I’m gonna die, and none of you guys will? It’s okay. Part of life.”</p><p>“Yeah, but here I am, <em>complaining</em>—”</p><p>“You’re not complaining, you’re saying it’s weird,” said Aimé. “It is, you’re right. Hurts my head too, sometimes. Jean’s nearly two-hundred-and-ninety. He’s lived my lifetime ten times over, more than. It must be weird, growing up and knowing that that’s gonna be you.”</p><p>“Do you think it’s nice, having what they have?” asked Bedelia, picking up her tray and balancing it on the flat of her arm as she pulled the oven open, and Aimé raised his eyebrows as he tossed more of the pumpkin into the pot, pulling a squash toward him to keep chopping.</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“Colm and Jean,” said Bedelia. “And Benedictine, I suppose – Colm says they all Fell the same day.”</p><p>“I think it’s nice sometimes,” said Aimé. “Other times they try to kill each other.”</p><p>Bedelia looked thoughtful as she turned the dial on a little timer shaped like a rabbit, putting it down and pouring herself more of the elderflower lemonade Paddy made himself, and that Aimé kind of wanted to learn how to do.</p><p>“You must think it’s strange,” said Bedelia. “For them to have lived that long and still not know how to handle each other.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, pushing his glass forward so she could pour him some too.</p><p>“I think it’s strange,” she said.</p><p>“I think they try,” said Aimé. “You don’t think that’s enough?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” she said, dusting her hands with flour to start working the dough for samosas. “I like them, I do – Jean helps me with class, he always messages me back if I ask him questions and Daddy doesn’t know. And Colm’s <em>nice</em>, you know, he’s the same way Daddy is – he fixes things, he listens to people, even if he doesn’t always look like he is. But I’m not stupid, Aimé – even if they don’t tell me, I can connect two and two, both of them scarred over as they are, and they know a lot about guns, bombs, and more than hurting other people, they fight and hurt each other. And they teach you.”</p><p>Aimé looked down at the knife as he passed it through the squash, slicing it into chunks. Even as he held the knife in his hand, he couldn’t help but think about the weighting on the blade, wonder how hard it would be to throw, think about where he’d have to put his weight on the handle to make sure the blade stuck the landing.</p><p>“I’m not going to kill anybody,” said Aimé, giving her a small smile, and did his best to ignore the slight tug in his stomach as he said it, finishing off the squash. “Can I ask you something?”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“It’s about— race.”</p><p>Bedelia gave him a funny look, raising her eyebrows. “Okay?” she asked slowly.</p><p>“Well, I just, in case you didn’t want to talk about it.”</p><p>“No, Aimé,” said Bedelia, with her mild sarcasm that somehow still came off like sunshine, “if you want to ask me questions about race, you have to submit a written application. If I don’t want to answer, I won’t answer.”</p><p>“I feel like I pissed off Asmodeus and Bene.”</p><p>“Maybe you did,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “If you want to ask me about them, I can’t help you.”</p><p>“No,” said Aimé. “I just wanted to ask about… I don’t know, you know how you cook? All the stuff you know, did Pádraic teach you everything? Who taught him?”</p><p>“Oh,” said Bedelia, and he watched her relax, a little of the tension going out of her shoulders, and as she worked, packing samosas with neat, quick movements of her hands, she said, “No, he didn’t. I don’t think Daddy cooked that much before he had me – cooked fish sometimes, ate meat with other people, but that’s all. But when he had me, he asked for help with people he knew – other nurses, other people at church. You know the Agarwals, they’re your neighbours?”</p><p>“I know their cat,” said Aimé. “And I’ve met their youngest, Sushmita.” He’d seen her, at least, run after Snowman in the street.</p><p>“Well, Sushmita’s mother is Farida, and she started out as a nurse the year before Daddy left nursing, and then there’s Shruti and Devendra Goel, they worked in the hospital at the same time as him as well, and they all knew him – Daddy doesn’t talk much, but like all of us, he understands pretty much every language there is. He was worried, when De brought me to him, that he’d hurt my development, because he can’t talk much – he signs, and he says a little, but it’s hard for him to force it, you know. And I think he was scared of me not being around women, too – maybe he didn’t need to worry about it, because I always felt like he loved me enough, but he wanted me to be around other women, too.”</p><p>Aimé nodded his head, leaning his elbows on the counter to look at her.</p><p>“So when he had me, he asked Farida, Mrs Agarwal, to help, and she got the Goels to help too, and they kind of had this network and made me feel included. He knew everything about babies already, about development, feeding me, you know, but he organised playdates so that I could be around other kids, around human kids, and cooking, it’s important, you know, and so he asked for lessons, and they taught him, but when I was growing up, they’d teach me too, and I’d learn with their daughters.”</p><p>“That’s nice,” said Aimé softly, after a few seconds had passed, and he realised he’d been quiet. “That’s— That’s really nice.”</p><p>“That isn’t the answer you expected?” asked Bedelia, and Aimé shook his head. “Everyone does the same with George, you know. And you, too. It’s not the same as a kid, or anything, but it’s…”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Aimé, hearing the slight distance in his own voice and feeling strange about it, but not quite able to make it even out. “Community. Family. Doesn’t anyone ever ask where he’s from? Pádraic? Other Indians, I mean.”</p><p>“He tells people we have family in Jabalpur, in Madhya Pradesh. It’s true,” said Bedelia, and Aimé nodded, but he was aware he wasn’t exactly listening, that he felt a little weird. Warm, but in a way that made him feel uncomfortable, and he couldn’t quite focus.</p><p>It wasn’t the first time he felt like he wasn’t supposed to be there, with the angels.</p><p>Putting a packed samosa on a plate, Bedelia asked, “You okay?”</p><p>Aimé inhaled, and then nodded his head. “Yeah,” he said.</p><p>“We like having you here, you know,” said Bedelia. “All of us. Not just Jean.”</p><p>“I know. It’s… nice.” He couldn’t think of another word, and Bedelia didn’t ask him to.</p><p>“Yeah,” she said. “You want me to show how to do this?”</p><p>“Sure,” said Aimé, and came to stand across from her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0040"><h2>40. Introspection</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“Are you replying to more fan mail?” asked Jean-Pierre disconsolately, lingering in Asmodeus’ bedroom doorway, and Asmodeus leaned back from his desk, gesturing for Jean-Pierre to come inside.</p><p>“I thought you were still asleep,” he said, leaning back in his seat and letting Jean-Pierre clamber into his lap, leaning in against his brother’s chest and resting his cheek against his shoulder. Asmodeus’ desk chair was a huge, beautifully crafted thing, more than large enough to accommodate Jean-Pierre in Asmodeus’ lap, folded up as he was, his knees curled in against his brother’s chest as he pulled the chair back into his desk again. “Peadar abandoned you?”</p><p>“He’s lounging in the sun coming in through the window,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “I just forgot everyone was gone, that’s all.”</p><p>He’d been half-asleep, waking up, stumbling to look in the garden and feeling strange and empty when he realised there was no one outside, and after five minutes Aimé hadn’t replied to his text – he knew he’d gone to help Bedelia, of course, and everyone else was fishing. He did know. He was just tired when he woke up, that was all, and forgot.</p><p>He’d felt a little sick going up the stairs, not sure if Asmodeus was home or not, and it had been a relief, hearing his record player on as he ascended the stairs and finding him working at his desk.</p><p>Asmodeus’ lips brushed Jean-Pierre’s forehead, the hand not holding his fountain pen stroking his lower back.</p><p>“Family dinner tonight,” Asmodeus reminded him quietly.</p><p>“I know,” said Jean-Pierre. “I wasn’t frightened.”</p><p>“You just don’t like it.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t say anything, watching the way Asmodeus wrote. He was ambidextrous, Jean-Pierre knew – he wrote with his right hand in English and French, and with his left in Arabic.</p><p>It wasn’t fan mail, as it happened, nor something from the Embassy, either: Asmodeus was writing in English, and replying to a letter from what looked to be a record label in England.</p><p>“You’re going to do another album?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“That troubles you?”</p><p>“You said you’d stay in the new year.” It sounded bratty even to his own ears, but Asmodeus didn’t tell him so, only continued to gently stroke Jean-Pierre’s back and rest his chin on top of Jean’s head.</p><p>“I’ll record in Dublin,” he said, in that calm, reasonable he had when he was specifically <em>not</em> telling Jean-Pierre that he was being <em>un</em>calm, and <em>un</em>reasonable. Jean-Pierre curled in tighter to his body, pressing his lips tightly together.</p><p>“Another cover album?”</p><p>“They sell better than my original work, I’m told,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“Only because you never sing on your own compositions.”</p><p>“I can write music,” Asmodeus said softly. “Poetry, even. Where the two meet, however, I draw a terrible blank.”</p><p>“Will you play with us at the party?” asked Jean. “You keep saying you’ll play with us and you never do.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” said Asmodeus, sounding genuine, as blank as his face was. “I didn’t realise it mattered so much to you.”</p><p>“It doesn’t, it’s not important. I just like it when you play with us, that’s all, and most of the time when you come to trad nights with us you won’t even sing.”</p><p>“I’ll bring my accordion to the party.”</p><p>“Thank you. Are you going to play it on your record?”</p><p>“Absolutely not.”</p><p>“Snob.”</p><p>“I am a snob,” said Asmodeus pleasantly. “And for my darling hick brothers I shall play any instrument under the sky, but some are <em>not</em> for the recording studio.”</p><p>“You think it will ruin your sex appeal, if people hear you play the accordion?”</p><p>“It could well do,” said Asmodeus gravely, and Jean-Pierre laughed, turning his head and looking over Asmodeus’ shoulder. His music cabinet was open, and on the bottom shelf Jean-Pierre could see all of Asmodeus’ own records, the neat sleeves organised in chronological order, dates always at the underside of the sleeve’s spine.</p><p>It was how Hamish MacKinnon organised his records, Jean-Pierre knew. Most of Asmodeus’ records, it seemed to him, were produced with Hamish MacKinnon in mind, whether his record labels knew that or not.</p><p>No matter that Asmodeus was going to stay a while, Jean-Pierre knew he’d visit England for <em>him</em>.</p><p>“What are we listening to?” Jean-Pierre asked.</p><p>“It’s Poulenc.”</p><p>“It’s very drab.”</p><p>“Change the record if you like, I wasn’t listening very actively.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre extricated himself, plucking the needle from the vinyl and sliding it back into its sleeve. He didn’t even bother trying to put it back on the shelf – Asmodeus always got very fussy about that sort of thing even though Jean-Pierre and he had similar organisational systems anyway – but put it on the bed instead, and began to rifle through Asmodeus’ frankly brain-numbing selection of music, through different operas, orchestral compositions, and jazz.</p><p>Asmodeus’ music preferences, from range to range, were almost always dull – if they weren’t intellectual, they were clever in a sort of smug, superior way, and if they weren’t superior, they were sultry, and if they weren’t sultry, they were sarcastic, and if they weren’t that, they were experimental, which Jean-Pierre disliked most of all.</p><p>He picked out one of the very well-used records, sliding it out of the sleeve and putting it into place.</p><p>“You always pick Eartha Kitt,” said Asmodeus, not turning around to look at him.</p><p>“She’s all you have worth listening to,” said Jean, and pressed the switch for the needle.</p><p>“Would you like to talk about it?” asked Asmodeus as Jean-Pierre turned the volume dial slightly down, not really caring if he couldn’t make out the words, and fell back onto the bed.</p><p>“Talk about what?” Jean-Pierre asked. “It doesn’t bother me they didn’t invite me fishing. Even if I wanted to sit about all day waiting to kill a fish, which I don’t, there’s barely enough space in the boat with all four of them.”</p><p>“They’re getting two boats,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“I didn’t want to go anyway,” Jean-Pierre said irritably, although he realised he said it irritably enough that it didn’t sound true at all, which in all honesty, it probably wasn’t. He felt tight and full and too hot, like the tense air before a storm. “But they could have <em>asked</em> me.”</p><p>“They could have,” Asmodeus agreed.</p><p>“They brought <em>George</em>,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“His first time fishing,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“As if I don’t have anything to teach him,” Jean-Pierre muttered. “Just because he’s not interested in anything I like – but I pay for things Colm does with him, <em>and</em> me and Aimé put a lot of effort into his Christmas presents, and I can do things other than read books and do surgery. And Benedictine’s going to be horrible to him, and I expect he’ll still like her better than me.”</p><p>Asmodeus spun his chair slowly around, and took off his reading glasses to look at Jean-Pierre properly.</p><p>Jean crossed his arms over his chest and looked up at the ceiling.</p><p>“I never got the impression that George didn’t like you just as well as he does Colm,” said Asmodeus, painfully reasonably this time. “I expect he just doesn’t feel as though he can invite you anywhere, that’s all. Why don’t you invite <em>him</em> to do something?”</p><p>“Like what?” asked Jean-Pierre. “He faints at the sight of blood, and I’m certain he can’t come to Tayto Park with us, and—”</p><p>“When you and Aimé next see a film, perhaps?” suggested Asmodeus. “Or a museum, or the aquarium, the zoo. Colm won’t go anywhere like that in case he catches culture, you know that.”</p><p>“Have you taken him to the ballet?”</p><p>“A pantomime.”</p><p>“When?”</p><p>“Last week.”</p><p>“You didn’t invite me.”</p><p>“It was Cinderella. Last time I brought you to see an adaptation of it you whispered anti-monarchist commentary in my ear throughout.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre dragged one of Asmodeus’ silken pillows under his head and another to his chest, wrapping his arms around it and hugging it to his chest.</p><p>“Is George what you were upset about?” asked Asmodeus.</p><p>“I’m not upset about anything,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“You were upset last night.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“When Aimé was hurt.”</p><p>“He was fine.”</p><p>“You were frightened to give him stitches.”</p><p>“I thought it would heal on its own.”</p><p>Asmodeus didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look expectant, didn’t even raise an eyebrow, just kept his gaze on Jean-Pierre, his green eyes politely attentive, his expression neutral.</p><p>Jean-Pierre squeezed the pillow in his arms a little tighter.</p><p>It had been more blood than he was expecting, the wound deeper, and he’d flipped into his usual medical persona in an instant, but he’d ignored every other instinct, because he couldn’t help but think of Aimé dead, Aimé frothing at the mouth with rabies, sick to his stomach and wasting away from cat scratch fever, stiff as a corpse with tetanus, or septic, septic and made jaundiced with the septicaemia, and right in front of Jean-Pierre’s eyes—</p><p>Asmodeus was still looking at him.</p><p>“They all die,” Jean-Pierre muttered. “They all get hurt. I know that.”</p><p>“That doesn’t make it easy,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“Bet you wouldn’t be so calm if it was your Scotsman liable to fall down dead at any moment.”</p><p>“You’re very jealous today,” said Asmodeus, so calmly Jean-Pierre knew he’d struck a nerve. “You could have gone with him to help Bedelia, you know.”</p><p>“She didn’t invite me.”</p><p>“You think she’d have been displeased to see you?”</p><p>“She invited <em>him</em>.”</p><p>“Which bothers you.”</p><p>“I told him to go.”</p><p>“Because you didn’t want to look at his arm.”</p><p>“Do I want to look at him or not?” Jean-Pierre asked, hearing the snap in his own voice. “Am I jealous of Bedelia or jealous of Aimé, or of George, or Colm? Hm? Who am I jealous of, De, please, won’t you tell me all, you who understands me so <em>well</em>?”</p><p>“It will get easier, you know,” Asmodeus said gently, after letting a few seconds pass. “I know it’s difficult at the moment, but it will get easier, once everyone’s found their rhythm, and you’ve sorted everything out with Heidemarie. I think you’re feeling a lot at once, that’s all. I know it makes you irritable when you don’t know what direction you’re being pulled in. It’s a lot to make sense of at once.”</p><p>It <em>was</em> comforting, when Asmodeus said things like that.</p><p>Asmodeus never talked about Jean-Pierre’s feelings the way Colm did – he always seemed to understand when it was a matter of it being too much at once rather than one or two specific feelings, even if it didn’t make them go away.</p><p>“I want to ask you something,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Alright.”</p><p>“I want you to be truthful.”</p><p>“I always am.”</p><p>“Will Aimé’s father try to kill him?”</p><p>“Not yet, I don’t think,” Asmodeus said, looking at Jean-Pierre seriously. “I expect he won’t until a new heir is already lined up, so to speak. But then, yes, I do believe he’ll try.”</p><p>“But he’s mine,” said Jean-Pierre, ashamed of how desperate he felt, how nervous he sounded, humiliated and small in his big brother’s bed, and not much wanting to leave it at this moment and think of the world outside. “And that means he’s yours by extension. Untouchable. Won’t that put him off?</p><p>“You can’t hide behind me for everything, Jean,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“I don’t mean that,” Jean-Pierre muttered, sitting up. “I just mean— Won’t he be frightened of you? Can’t you <em>make</em> him frightened of you?”</p><p>Asmodeus inhaled, putting his chin on the back of his hand and leaning back in his chair, artfully crossing one ankle over the other. Everything Asmodeus did was artful, absolutely everything, and Jean-Pierre was strangely comforted to see him relax into the position, because it meant Asmodeus was thinking about it very seriously.</p><p>“You know,” he said finally, “I’m very glad you asked me that.”</p><p>“Glad?” Jean-Pierre repeated. “Why?”</p><p>“It’s good when you ask me for help,” said Asmodeus softly. “When you don’t feel you have to do everything yourself. But here especially, with Deverell… I assume you’re asking me because you know you <em>can’t</em> kill him yourself.”</p><p>“I could,” said Jean-Pierre immediately, defensively.</p><p>“With a little effort, yes,” Asmodeus agreed. “But you know why you shouldn’t.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre sighed, feeling the black silk under his fingers, dragging and pulling at it. “I told Aimé I’d not kill him. That it was Aimé’s right to kill him, if he wanted. And if he does want to, I’ll help him.” He was aware of the defiance in his tone, but Asmodeus didn’t seem angry, or even annoyed.</p><p>“You’re thinking it through,” said Asmodeus. “You’re holding back an impulse you know could have consequences for other people. That’s <em>good</em>, Jean – you know that, don’t you? You know you’ve come on in leaps and bounds, these past years.”</p><p>“I’m not as much of a liability.”</p><p>“Jean, if I have proven anything to you since we’ve known one another,” said Asmodeus, “I should hope it would be that no matter what liability you might or might not be, I will always come to get you. For <em>you</em>, this is good. It’s good that you’re setting limits for yourself, that you’re thinking critically about these things – avoiding undue risk to us, to the Embassy, yes, but to yourself, as well. You know I’m proud of you and the progress you’ve made, don’t you? You know I’m always proud?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s eyes were very hot, all of a sudden, and he reached up, wiping at them furiously, his stomach flipping painfully in his gut, and Asmodeus came forward, leaning at the edge of the bed and curling one of his hands in Jean’s hair, stroking through it.</p><p>“Do you think he’ll try to kill Aimé too?” he asked quietly.</p><p>“He didn’t try to kill Farhad.”</p><p>“Only because he didn’t have to,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “All he had to do was come into his hospital room and— and <em>gloat</em>.”</p><p>Asmodeus kept stroking through Jean-Pierre’s hair, combing his fingers slowly through it. It was easier, didn’t tangle quite so easily, since he’d let Asmodeus cut it.</p><p>“When it comes to the point where Aimé and Myrddin might meet,” said Asmodeus, “I expect Aimé will be more than able to hold his own. I wouldn’t expect you to make yourself alone forever, simply because of what <em>he</em> might think, or what comment he might make of it.”</p><p>“I love you,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“I love you too,” Asmodeus said. “Very much, I do.”</p><p>“Will you lie down with me?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“No,” said Asmodeus. “But I’ll suffer through a blanket over me if you want to share my chair.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre nodded.</p><p>He didn’t sleep, curled into Asmodeus’ shoulder, but just dozed, enough that he laughed drowsily when Peadar toddled into the room and clambered up to stuff himself into the gap between Jean-Pierre’s knees and Asmodeus’ belly.</p><p>“This isn’t comfortable, you know,” muttered Asmodeus as he slid a letter into an envelope.</p><p>“Speak for yourself,” Jean-Pierre said as Peadar purred and shoved his head up against Jean’s chin.</p><p>*     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>Benedictine had apparently never been on a trampoline before, and she was laughing with Bedelia and George both, struggling to keep her balance, but she still didn’t fall over quite as much as George, who was always falling over himself.</p><p>Leaning up against the uneven bricks of the front of the house, he could hear all of them laughing, hear Bedelia trying to explain to both of them what to do, how to do it. At one point, Aimé heard Benedictine and George both laugh and make admiring sounds – Bedelia had done a backflip.</p><p>Sitting at the table inside, Pádraic, Jean-Pierre, and Colm were playing a card game Aimé wasn’t sure of the name of, and they were playing with a Camelot deck, except the labels on the art were in Irish.</p><p>It was the time of evening where Aimé would usually be smoking a cigarette, and his mouth felt empty, his lips chapped and dry. He’d brought his wine outside with him, but he wasn’t drinking it, just held it loosely at his side. The stone was cool under his shoulders, but he had nothing to look at out here in the dark yard, so he looked at the goose who was still standing outside the chicken coop, looking suspiciously about at the darkened garden, at Aimé himself.</p><p>She was a guard-goose, Bedelia said – they’d hatched her alongside some of the chicks, and she kicked up a mighty fuss if anything suspicious showed up in the yard, and was a good deal bigger than the hens themselves.</p><p>He heard the doorstep creak as someone came outside, and glanced to Asmodeus.</p><p>“Did they really nearly get arrested today?” he asked.</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said. “A gard stopped them because they were fishing out of season, which is an on the spot fine. Benedictine hopped about with some legalese, Colm threatened him, but before he and his partner could get any more riled up, Pádraic stepped in. Knew them personally.”</p><p>“George seemed to think it was a close thing,” said Aimé.</p><p>“Well, in fairness to him, if Pádraic hadn’t joined them, I expect it would have been. They don’t know how to keep themselves in check, at times, and they feed into one another.”</p><p>“They’d have killed him, you mean,” said Aimé, surprised by how cold his voice sounded, even though his heart had skipped a beat when George had mentioned it casually, nervously, trying to laugh about it.</p><p>“If George and Pádraic hadn’t been there? No, I don’t expect so. They might have knocked the two of them out, given them a bit of amnesia at most.”</p><p>“Because that’s completely normal,” said Aimé, and Asmodeus sighed. His back hit the stone beside Aimé, so that they were touching each other, Asmodeus’ shoulder in line with Aimé’s head. “Are you pissed at me?”</p><p>“Me?” Asmodeus asked, glancing at him. “No. Why?”</p><p>“’Cause of the shit I said about you and Benedictine. About race.”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed. “No. I think what you said was quite stupid and short-sighted, but it didn’t piss me off.”</p><p>“Oh, so you’re not angry,” said Aimé. “You’re <em>disappointed</em>.”</p><p>“You’re young,” said Asmodeus. “You’re rich, white, educated. I’m not angry you don’t have a frame of reference for what other people’s lives are like. I am… <em>frustrated.</em> That the vectors by which many of my siblings’ lives are judged and balanced are calculated in such a way, that many others are so ignorant of them they might as well not exist. I feel injustice very keenly – I always have. That our acknowledgement of injustice itself is so coloured by our own experiences, and therefore, our own prejudices, our own perceptions, troubles me. There is no such thing as a truly impartial perception, or communication – and because there is no such thing, true equality, true justice, will always be difficult to achieve.”</p><p>“I forget that you’re a philosopher too,” said Aimé slowly, surprised by how much that high-concept paragraph fucking soothed him, and Asmodeus laughed his low, resonant laugh.</p><p>“I’m no philosopher,” Asmodeus murmured. “I’m good at delivering a message, that’s all. One of life’s communicators, you might say.”</p><p>“Is that why you were nervous about Benedictine coming before? Because she’s Black, and Colm and Jean are white?”</p><p>“Funny you should notice that,” Asmodeus murmured. “I don’t think Jean and Colm ever have, you know.”</p><p>“Have you asked them?”</p><p>“No. I’d rather not draw attention to it.” Asmodeus inhaled slowly, looking thoughtful for a moment. He was holding his spectacles in one hand, one beautifully manicured thumb nail sliding slowly back and forth over one of the thin arms. “It isn’t that Benedictine is Black or Haitian that troubles me. What you have to understand is that until quite recently, the speed of communication we have today truly wasn’t possible, even within the magical world. I knew the three of them would Fall around the same time, but I didn’t know until soon before that they would Fall in precisely the same instant. I made a decision from where I was, which of them would be quickest for me to get to. Jean-Pierre I knew would be fine, and Benedictine Fell in the midst of rainforest – I made the decision to go to Colm because he Fell about two miles off the coast. If I’d not been there, he likely would have continuously choked on water, passed out, and woken up again. Would have drowned a hundred times, a thousand, before he was pushed ashore or caught in a boat – and that’s if no animal came upon him, or no current pushed him further into the Atlantic. I made the decision to go to him, to bring him ashore.”</p><p>Aimé looked at Asmodeus’ face, at the serious expression on his face, the way he stared into the middle distance, thinking deeply, thinking that far back.</p><p>“Pre-revolution,” said Asmodeus softly. “If she had been found by the French, if she had fallen into town or at the docks instead of in the woods, if she had encountered slavers instead of rebels, I think about what could have happened to her, all the additional pains she would have suffered, because I chose to help Colm first.”</p><p>Aimé was out of his depth with this, didn’t know exactly how to respond and what to say, but he wanted to say the right thing, or if not the right thing, wanted to say <em>something</em>, something that would actually make Asmodeus feel better. How did you make Asmodeus feel better?</p><p>“But none of that extra stuff did happen to her,” said Aimé. “You just said, she <em>did</em> go in with other rebels, and then she was part of the revolution, right? And now she helps other people.”</p><p>“I know,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“And if you had gone to her,” Aimé pointed out, “you’d just feel guilty about Colm drowning.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Aimé shifted slightly on his feet, crossing his arms over his chest as he tried to put the next part into a decent sentence, into <em>something</em> worth actually saying. “And even if all that stuff had happened, it wouldn’t be your fault. Because you didn’t invent French people being racist as fuck, or— or fucking slavery. Or any of that shit. You’re just one guy who can’t juggle three people on three different islands with two oceans between them at once.”</p><p>“Yes,” said Asmodeus, and he put an arm around Aimé’s neck, squeezing his shoulder and giving him a strange half-hug that made Aimé smile. “Yes, I do know all that, actually, Aimé.”</p><p>“But you still feel guilty.”</p><p>Asmodeus sighed, and patted the top of his arm. “All the time.”</p><p>“Twenty-three thousand angels,” Aimé said. “You can’t protect all of them. Not from everything. They’re still landing on Earth, and it’s, it’s fucking shit. All we can do is try and fix the small stuff. Right?”</p><p>“Quite right,” said Asmodeus. He squeezed him again, and Aimé wished he felt like he could squeeze him back, like he could give Asmodeus a proper hug, but it didn’t feel like he could, somehow.</p><p>“Am I making it worse?”</p><p>“No, no you’re not,” Asmodeus murmured. “I’m just glad you’re here with us, that’s all.</p><p>“It was fucking easier when I just said shit to piss people off, you know. It was easier doing that and getting a reaction than trying to give a shit and actually care if I fucking hurt people.”</p><p>Asmodeus laughed, and like this, Aimé’s head pulled in against his chest, the sound was so resonant it thrummed through his head and made his teeth tingle, and Asmodeus chuckled more quietly this time, patting Aimé’s hair and letting him go.</p><p>“Do you miss it?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Asmodeus was quiet, looking out into the yard the same way Aimé did, and he didn’t answer right away, seeming to consider the question in detail. Jean called him cold, sometimes, but he didn’t seem cold to Aimé – he was warm and solid, even when he wasn’t touching Aimé, like a strong pillar of something.</p><p>Aimé wondered if Asmodeus would seem so comforting, if Aimé didn’t know him personally, if he’d find him intimidating, as tall as he was, as broad-shouldered, as cool and collected. Increasingly, he wasn’t intimidated by him at all, not anymore than he was by Jean-Pierre or Colm.</p><p>“That’s a very broad question,” said Asmodeus. “Do you mind if I ask you to clarify?”</p><p>“Um,” Aimé said, “I was just thinking about you doing Benedictine’s hair, the way you take care of her, of everyone, but Jean says you write like you learned to a thousand years ago, and I know you don’t like computers, technology. That you like ballet, that you like old-fashioned stuff, but there’s always been bad shit, evil shit. I guess I’m asking if you get homesick. Not for a place, per se, just… for what it was like for you. Before.”</p><p>There was another silence before Asmodeus answered, and when he did, his voice was slow, measured. “I miss the way it felt. The universe used to seem profoundly simple and finite in a way that comforted me. Now, it is neither, and that that was ever my perception seems, in retrospect, to be painfully foolish. I don’t resent… what has happened. Where I have come to, where any of us have come to. Such is the nature of time and progress. But I always grieve for what was – or, perhaps, how I imagine it could have been, would have been, if I had been truly blessed with the gift of foresight, and had known long ago what I’ve learned with time.”</p><p>Inside, Aimé heard a thump on the table, and then heard the sound of Pádraic and Jean-Pierre’s laughter as Colm swore in Irish, went off on a speech that Aimé wouldn’t have been able to understand even if he was inside.</p><p>“Everyone feels like that, I’m told,” said Asmodeus, with the barest of catches in his smooth, easy voice, as though he was worried about what he’d said. Insecurity wasn’t something Aimé associated with Asmodeus. “To some extent.”</p><p>“Yeah, I think so,” Aimé said. “But even if you weren’t a big brother to twenty thousand people, I think you’d feel that way more than most people do. Being as old as you are.”</p><p>“You want a cigarette?” asked Asmodeus.</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Aimé. “I don’t think so, actually. I just… think I’d normally have one right about now. You don’t gamble.”</p><p>“No,” said Asmodeus. “No, I don’t. It annoys Colm and Jean, sometimes – Jean-Pierre likes to play card games, likes to cheat, do impressive shuffles. He gambles at parties a lot, not just card games or dominos but little bets of skill, dares. Colm likes cards as well, but he prefers bets of skill. Neither of them will bet on greyhound or horse races, but they’ll bet on other competitions. You should see the two of them argue with one another, the bets they place, when there’s next a big agility competition for dogs on the television.”</p><p>“They televise shit like that?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus laughed.</p><p>“Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, they do, sometimes.”</p><p>“And Bene?”</p><p>“Yes, on all of the above.”</p><p>“But you don’t like it.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“’Cause it’s a sin?”</p><p>Asmodeus didn’t laugh this time, but smiled, showed his white, white teeth. “I don’t even like to play cards with adults, you know. I play with children, children who don’t understand what it is to bet, and don’t try. Adults don’t understand what it is either, of course, but they <em>do</em> try.”</p><p>“What does that mean?”</p><p>“Gambling always escalates,” said Asmodeus. “There’s something profoundly foolish in a man who rolls his boulder from the top of the mountain and thinks he can control which way it will roll.”</p><p>“You know that mystical shit does not land with me.”</p><p>“Metaphors aren’t mystical, Aimé. You’re just overly literal.”</p><p>“Seems like this is a long way of you telling me you don’t know how to control yourself when the odds get higher.”</p><p>Asmodeus looked at him in a way that wasn’t intimidating, wasn’t scary, wasn’t angry. In fact, Aimé didn’t think he was angry at Aimé at all – but he was surprised that he’d said it, and surprised, too, that Aimé was right.</p><p>Asmodeus’ face didn’t move, his eyes didn’t widen, his lips didn’t part or even twitch. Not a single muscle moved in his jaw, his cheeks, his brow, and yet somehow, Aimé felt like he was looking at him naked for a half second, like he was seeing something he wasn’t supposed to.</p><p>“Do you gamble, Aimé?” asked Asmodeus softly.</p><p>“No,” said Aimé. “I try not to.”</p><p>“Poker?” asked Asmodeus. “Cards?”</p><p>“Bet the clothes off my back, a few times,” said Aimé. “Bet on boxing matches, mine, other people’s. We’re not supposed to bet, addicts. We don’t understand consequences the way we’re supposed to. Fucked in the head.”</p><p>“I like your head,” Asmodeus said mildly, patting him on the cheek, and Aimé smiled slightly as he took a sip of his wine, following Asmodeus inside.</p><p>“… have to come with us, Benedictine, it’s only a group of eight or so, but they’re already booking out the whole rink, so you might as well come along,” George was saying. “And Bedelia, Bedelia’s coming too. I don’t think I’ll be any good, but apparently it’s easier with your wings out.”</p><p>“They being good to you?” asked Benedictine, apparently directing the question to Bedelia only.</p><p>“They are, actually,” Bedelia said quietly, piecing out more of the pie she and Aimé had worked on earlier and pushing more of it to George and to Benedictine both. “I think it’s different, now that I’m an adult, you know? I look the same way you do. It made them all more nervous when I was a kid.”</p><p>Aimé let Jean-Pierre pull him closer when l’ange reached for him, allowing himself to be tugged to sit on the arm of his chair, Jean-Pierre’s hand wrapped loosely around his belly, his head coming to rest on Aimé’s side.</p><p>He looked serious, frowning down at his cards, and Aimé put his hand in Jean-Pierre’s hair, looking between his and Colm’s frowns, to Pádraic’s serious expression.</p><p>“What about you, Paddy?” asked Benedictine.</p><p>Pádraic shrugged and didn’t answer, focusing on his cards and tapping the tabletop to up his bet – they were only gambling with those little fish-shaped biscuits, which Aimé knew damn well that of the three of them, only Colm could actually eat, but they’d transitioned from using nuts <em>because</em> Jean-Pierre kept eating from Colm and Pádraic’s pots.</p><p>“You needn’t still be angry at them, Daddy,” said Bedelia. “They’re all being very nice to me now.”</p><p>Pádraic grumbled something that didn’t sound like English, that Aimé couldn’t make sense of, but it made Colm snort derisively.</p><p>“You should come,” said Bedelia.</p><p>“Party?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Irish angels,” Asmodeus supplied, pouring more wine for him. “We’ve booked out an ice rink and the café attached, just a little meet-up on Boxing Day.”</p><p>“Oh, Stephen’s Day?” Aimé asked. “Don’t you want to go, ange?”</p><p>“No,” said Jean-Pierre crisply. He didn’t look up from his cards, but he kept his grip tight on Aimé’s side, fingers pressing into his side, hard enough to hurt a little, and Aimé caught his hand, interlinking their fingers so he’d squeeze Aimé’s hand instead.</p><p>Colm was looking at his cards with the same stout, scowling focus, and Aimé turned to look at Asmodeus, who gave a minute shake of his head.</p><p>“<em>The fuck?”</em> Aimé mouthed at him.</p><p>“<em>Later</em>,” Asmodeus silently replied, and then said smoothly, “I do think you’ll find it easier with your wings out, George, they’ll help you balance, but they’ll help you control your speed, as well. You can always spread your wings out to help you slow yourself down when you try to brake.”</p><p>“Are you good at ice-skating, Asmodeus?” George asked.</p><p>“I enjoy it,” said Asmodeus, giving a delicate shrug of his shoulders, taking a piece of Bedelia’s pie and biting into it. Somehow, he dropped no crumbs, and he chewed delicately, primly, before he swallowed. “I’m no great artist.”</p><p>“Don’t fucking listen to a thing he says, George,” said Benedictine. “He won a medal for the Embassy at the Magical Olympics in ’57.”</p><p>“I like how you clarify ’57,” Asmodeus said dryly. “As though it were a regular event as opposed to a singular, short-lived experiment.”</p><p>“He won a medal,” said Benedictine to George and Bedelia, both of whom were looking at Asmodeus with wide-eyed, fascinated delight. “For figure-skating.”</p><p>“Do you have other awards for skating, De?” asked Bedelia.</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus said. “Most of my accolades are for dance.”</p><p>“Everyone in the group chat seems pretty excited you’re coming,” said George.</p><p>“That’s very flattering,” said Asmodeus, smiling. “I’m glad to hear it, of course.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s fingernails were digging so hard into Aimé’s hand that he was leaving crescent shaped marks.</p><p>“Can we play a boardgame, or something?” asked Aimé. “I don’t know the rules for any card games, and I’d like to get drunker before I have to learn.”</p><p>“The murder mystery one,” said George immediately, excitedly, and launched himself like a windmill of limbs across the room, rifling through the bottom shelf of the cupboard for the boardgames.</p><p>“Play on a team?” Aimé asked Jean-Pierre as he slowly put his cards down, and Jean nodded. He let Aimé tug him up and out of the chair, swapping their places so that he could bundle Jean-Pierre into his lap and scoot the chair closer, even as Colm and Bedelia cleared off the table for the board.</p><p>“I hate this fucking game,” muttered Colm.</p><p>Aimé waited for Jean-Pierre to snipe at him, but it didn’t come: Jean-Pierre seemed distracted, staring down at his own knees, and admittedly, Colm didn’t seem entirely with it either.</p><p>“Play on my team, Colm?” George asked as he rushed back to the table. “So Bedelia can be with Pádraic, and Benedictine can play with De?”</p><p>Colm sighed, long-suffering, but he did almost smile as he said, “Fine, kid. If you want.”</p><p>It took a little while for the frost to thaw, as they started setting the game up, but Jean-Pierre elected to read out everything from his cards in an exaggerated impression of Asmodeus’ voice, which Colm joined in with, and had everyone laughing.</p><p>The tension faded away, and Aimé relaxed with his arms loosely wrapped around Jean-Pierre’s waist, his cheek rested against Jean-Pierre’s chest.</p><p>He didn’t play much himself, just smiled as the others did, let himself relax right into Jean-Pierre, hold him, feel the tension slowly eke out of him. There were a few things he wanted to ask about, tonight, like Asmodeus and the dancing, how other angels apparently were excited to see Asmodeus.</p><p>It wasn’t until hours later, when Aimé went into the kitchen to dry up dishes as Asmodeus washed them and put them aside, because everyone else was about to play charades, but had begun to argue about whether you could use ISL, that he asked about it.</p><p>“What, they aren’t invited?”</p><p>“Colm and Jean aren’t,” said Asmodeus. “Pádraic is just angry about how they used to think of Bedelia.”</p><p>“I didn’t know there were other angels in Ireland.”</p><p>“Yes,” said Asmodeus. “As soon as George Fell I put him in contact. We’re a very close community, you know.”</p><p>“But not Jean-Pierre and Colm.”</p><p>“You might want to ask Jean about it,” said Asmodeus. “I’m not sure if he’ll want to, but if he does, I think it will be good for him. To talk through his feelings.”</p><p>Aimé dried off the serving dish in his hands.</p><p>“Other angels hate them,” he said. “Both of them? Or just Jean?”</p><p>“They’re thought of as a pair.”</p><p>“And you?”</p><p>“I love all angels,” said Asmodeus. “All of my siblings, my brothers, my sisters. I don’t pretend to be perfect, but all angels know me.”</p><p>It occurred to Aimé that this wasn’t anything like a fucking answer.</p><p>“I will always protect Colm and Jean-Pierre,” said Asmodeus when Aimé didn’t say anything. “Always, Aimé, as much as I can. But their choices are their own, when it comes to their relations with other angels, and with the world at large. I cannot undo every result of that which my brothers choose.”</p><p>“I’ll talk to him about it,” Aimé promised.</p><p>“Thank you,” said Asmodeus, and passed him another plate.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0041"><h2>41. Angel Politics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>They were into the early hours of the morning, and Jean-Pierre was in a bad mood. He was tired, was up many hours after he would normally be asleep, and even though he knew that it was best that he stay up tonight, so that tomorrow he’d be able to stay out longer after the party at the church, he was irritable and grumpy, and <em>slow</em>.</p><p>But Colm and Asmodeus were both having a good time – Asmodeus had shared a cigar with Benedictine and Pádraic outside, and was a little tipsy. He wasn’t drunk – Jean-Pierre had never seen him drunk – but he was doused enough in wine that he laughed more often and was looser, swaying more on his feet with the music on Bedelia’s phone.</p><p>He was barefoot, and as Bedelia showed what she had learned in her childhood ballet classes – she hadn’t stuck with it during junior cert, because it had taken up too much of her time, and she concentrated on her jiu jitsu instead – George tried to copy what the two of them did.</p><p>A plié he could just about manage, but as soon as Bedelia and Asmodeus started doing actual steps, Asmodeus en pointe, George couldn’t keep up, and kept laughing. He was giggling as he tried and failed to do every step, and Asmodeus and Bedelia were both helping him, putting their hands on his shoulders, his waist, to reposition him and to help him keep his balance as he tried his best to do as they did.</p><p>They were all laughing, not just George.</p><p>Asmodeus had taught Jean-Pierre to dance, when Jean-Pierre had still been too shaky to go back to work in the high-paced environment he was used to – he had danced a little, here and there, but while he’d gone to ballets with Asmodeus, he’d never tried it himself until later.</p><p>It had helped, afterward, dancing with Asmodeus.</p><p>People looked up to Asmodeus in that circle, idolised Asmodeus in general, not just other angels but people in the whole of that industry, on the magical side of things, anyway.</p><p>Asmodeus had kept him with him, those few years in the aftermath of his imprisonment, because Jean-Pierre couldn’t bear to be alone for more than a few moments, and wasn’t fit to practice medicine, wasn’t fit for anything.</p><p>The dance had let him centre himself again, had allowed for him to find a sort of core again. Long hours in a mirrored studio with Asmodeus’ hands on his body, forcing him into position after position, snapping his fingers.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had served alongside armies, had taken orders, had given orders, had trained and trained within militias, even – none of it compared to sweating the whole of himself out through his pores, with Asmodeus demanding he improve his form <em>more</em>, no, legs higher, no, more grace, Jean, do you want to look like marble or like clay?</p><p>Colm didn’t always like it when Asmodeus gave orders – Benedictine didn’t either, didn’t like to be the one not giving them, but Asmodeus never gave orders because he liked giving them, because he cared about the attention, because he was insecure about control.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had seen him give other ballet classes, and he was hard on everyone who took tutelage from him, on the rare occasion he gave tutorials, but it never seemed to Jean-Pierre that Asmodeus was as hard on anyone else as he was on him. He appreciated it – he did appreciate it, would always appreciate it.</p><p>It was the same as when Asmodeus lectured him, at the very beginning, when Jean-Pierre tried to avoid his violin practice.</p><p>This wasn’t proper tutelage now, and it didn’t seem to Jean-Pierre that Asmodeus was trying to teach George at all – it was play, and while Asmodeus answered the questions Bedelia posed him in earnestness, and his own form was perfection personified, he didn’t expect it of George or even Bedelia.</p><p>It was cute, watching him tickle George when George stumbled and making him laugh and squeal, and he tickled Bedelia too: twice, when she’d run toward him, he’d lifted her easily like ballet-dancers were meant to. It occurred to Jean-Pierre, distantly, that Asmodeus had probably given Bedelia her first ballet lessons, or been the inspiration for her to start.</p><p> </p><p>Heidemarie hadn’t stuck with ballet, but she’d given it a try, Jean-Pierre knew, because Colm and Asmodeus joked about it sometimes, when they thought Jean-Pierre wasn’t listening.</p><p>Twice, Asmodeus had come over and asked if Jean-Pierre didn’t want to join them, given that he was a wonderful dancer in his own right, that he knew more than enough about ballet to show George, that he moved beautifully on his feet, and could show George how to dance with his wings, too. It was nice, flattering, and it wasn’t that Jean-Pierre didn’t believe him, because he knew that Asmodeus had always applied his high standards to Jean-Pierre. He wasn’t a perfect dancer, but then, he’d never tried to be – but he was good enough for Asmodeus to approve, and that was important.</p><p>Jean-Pierre was in no mood to dance now, though, trying to keep himself awake as he sat up in Pádraic’s armchair beside the fire.</p><p>He wanted Asmodeus now, wanted Asmodeus to take him home, wanted Asmodeus to sit with him quietly by the fire or let Jean-Pierre go to sleep next to him as he worked – and if not Asmodeus, Colm.</p><p>If he asked either of them, he knew they’d say yes. Asmodeus would say yes immediately, and Colm might complain after – might complain during – but he’d say yes, too.</p><p>But—</p><p>He didn’t want to ruin everything.</p><p>Colm and Benedictine had been playing cards with Aimé, and Benedictine was showing him how to cheat. Jean-Pierre knew the techniques she was using because Asmodeus had taught them to him, too – Colm had never gotten the hang of sleight of hand, could be tremendously delicate with his fingers but not fast, not fast enough to hide things, to swap cards with one hand, to pick pockets.</p><p>Colm could fix a pocket watch, but he couldn’t steal one, and it had never occurred to Jean-Pierre before seeing him try that the latter might be harder for someone than the former.</p><p>Aimé was having a good time, Jean-Pierre thought, and it did make Jean-Pierre happy, that everyone seemed to like him so much, and treated him with such affection, and welcomed him in.</p><p>He wondered if other angels would do that.</p><p>Not just Doros, or Jean-Pierre and Colm, or other angels at the edge of everything, but the rest, the angels that apparently, George had now been welcomed into the fold of, and Bedelia too.</p><p>It was wrong of him to be jealous of that.</p><p>They were young, and hadn’t done anything wrong, and it was no surprise that other angels weren’t frightened of them, because they had no need to be. He had assumed when first they had met Bedelia that she would remain an outcast because of their suspicions of her being Nephilim, no matter that it wasn’t the case, and he’d never accounted for George.</p><p>Judging by how Colm was being, a little bit too quiet, a little bit stunted and a little oversensitive with Benedictine poked fun at him, he hadn’t accounted for it either.</p><p>Asmodeus had tried to say something about it just now, the second time he’d invited him to dance, but at least for now he seemed to have given up on it, and Jean-Pierre was glad, because he wanted time to think about his feelings on the subject.</p><p>He had a lot of feelings. Too many feelings, but they were distant and far away, bubbling far under his surface, because there were so many of them at once he couldn’t feel any of them at all, and he knew that Asmodeus was pleased that he had been exhibiting self-control, but this didn’t feel like self-control.</p><p>He just felt numb.</p><p>He realised that Aimé had gone from the room, probably gone to the kitchen to get more wine, and he stood sleepily to his feet to follow him, to see if maybe he would be interested in calling a taxi to take them home, given that Colm and Asmodeus didn’t seem interested in driving them anytime soon.</p><p>He found Aimé crowded up against the fridge, Benedictine leaning in against him, and his hands clenched tightly into fists at his sides.</p><p>“You pick him or he pick you?” asked Benedictine.</p><p>“I like to think he picked me because he saw me looking,” said Aimé, “but he’s your brother, you know him, and I know him enough by now to know that he probably did his research first, and stalked me. Benedictine, can you— Can you step back a little, please, can you—”</p><p>“I want to know if you’re going to hurt my brother,” said Bene.</p><p>“Only the way he likes to be hurt. Bene, the— I can smell the, the—”</p><p>“You cheat on him?”</p><p>“What? No. <em>Ah</em>, fuck, would you get your hands off my—!”</p><p>“Bene,” said Jean-Pierre, and Benedictine stepped back from him. Aimé tipped his head back, rubbing his crotch – he looked pale and sick, and the second Benedictine was stood more than a foot away from him he ran to the sink, retching. The scent of acid-tainted wine filled the room.</p><p>“He’s not like Benoit,” said Benedictine. She was a little drunk, but not very, and Jean-Pierre could see the expression on her face, the tight twist of her lips. She looked more than sad, but aggrieved, and he reached out, touched her chest, slid his hand to her shoulder, and she touched him back in the same way.</p><p>A soldier’s embrace.</p><p>“Are you angry that he isn’t like Benoit, or that he is?” asked Jean-Pierre softly.</p><p>Benedictine opened her mouth, closed it. “I miss him, that’s all,” she said.</p><p>“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre. “Me too.” They hugged before she went back into the other room, and he wondered if she realised he wasn’t feeling well, but he didn’t think so, because she would have made something of it.</p><p>He wanted to go home.</p><p>Aimé was rinsing his mouth out with water, bent as he was over the sink still.</p><p>“I don’t like when she touches you,” said Jean, because he wanted to say something, but it was the wrong thing to say, because Aimé gave him a sour look, his eyes heavily lidded, his skin pale.</p><p>“Priorities, ange,” said Aimé darkly, and Jean-Pierre reached for him, touched his hand to Aimé’s back, his shoulder.</p><p>“She likes you, I promise, she is protective of me, that’s all. And she was quite close with Benoit – she introduced us, you know. She thought he would keep me in line.”</p><p>“Benoit,” said Aimé, swallowing, “he was the Haitian guy, right?”</p><p>“Ouais.”</p><p>“You haven’t told me about him.”</p><p>There was no expectation in it, it didn’t seem to Jean-Pierre, but he wanted to answer. He thought of Benoit as he moulded himself against Aimé’s back, holding Aimé to him, wrapped his hands over his chest, pressed a kiss into the back of his hair.</p><p>“Do you like that you’re taller than me?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre. “I’m taller than most people.”</p><p>“Not De.”</p><p>“De is taller than almost everyone.”</p><p>“Not Paddy,” Aimé pointed out, turning to give Jean-Pierre a playful smile, despite still being pale and looking ill. Jean-Pierre wanted to laugh, but it wouldn’t come, and so he leaned and pressed his mouth to the back of Aimé’s neck again.</p><p>“Benoit was kind. Thoughtful. He was very tender, he liked for things to be in their place, to be organised, he was, um. Anal retentive, you’d call him now – or autistic. Like Asmodeus. He wasn’t like him, in most ways, but they shared that in common, a sort of um, organisational flair, except that Asmodeus is so severe and so demanding. Benoit was as easy going as a breeze. He called me bijou. He thanked me when I repaired his uniforms, and he treated me like I was a, a bird he had temporarily caged. He never complained when I strayed, when I fucked other men. He was a poet. Not in the way of a man who writes things down, but in the everyday way of a man who loves what it is he sees, everything he sees.”</p><p>He should have had more to say, he knew. He loved Benoit. He still loved him now, but although he tried to pull at his memories of Haiti, how he had felt there, living there, living with Benoit, it wouldn’t quite come to him, wouldn’t gather to him the way it ought.</p><p>He was adrift at sea.</p><p>“Bene liked him?” asked Aimé, and Jean-Pierre clung to the question like the buoy it was, and clung tight to Aimé too.</p><p>“He was a patriot,” said Jean-Pierre. “But more than that, he was a citizen. He worshiped people, because in man is the image of God. That’s how Benedictine is, too.”</p><p> “He worshiped angels too, I guess,” said Aimé. Jean-Pierre wasn’t sure what to make of his tone, and couldn’t see his face.</p><p>“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé turned around from the seat to look at him. Jean-Pierre reached for him, gently cupped his cheeks and slid his palms over the stubble there, and Aimé reached up to touch his hand.</p><p>“You don’t seem angry,” said Aimé softly.</p><p>“Mmm, I’m angry, I think,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>Aimé raised his eyebrows, looking at Jean-Pierre critically for a moment or two, and then he reached for Jean-Pierre’s own face, tilting Jean down to look at him, pulling slightly at his eye as though to check the dilation of his pupils. Jean-Pierre might have been forgiven for thinking, in the moment, that he was a doctor in his own right, but Aimé just slid his hands further up, through his hair, stepping closer.</p><p>“Hey,” he said quietly, looking up at him seriously with his mismatched eyes. “Hey, you feeling okay?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“You feeling anything?” asked Aimé.</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t know how to answer that question, couldn’t skim anything off the top of the distant swirl inside him. He felt very large inside, and very empty.</p><p>“I’m sorry she touched you,” he said, although his voice sounded dull to his own ears. “She shouldn’t have, it was— Invasive. I’m not happy she made you sick.”</p><p>“Baby, I’m glad you understand that that was shitty of her,” said Aimé, “but I was sick ‘cause your sister stinks of cigar smoke, not because she groped my dick. The only invasive thing fucking me up is you.” He tapped his own mouth, and Jean-Pierre couldn’t tell if he was meant to feel guilty, or if he was meant to feel triumphant, or if Aimé just wanted him to laugh.</p><p>He couldn’t tell what he was meant to feel at all, and when he did laugh, it sounded wooden, and forced.</p><p>“Okay,” said Aimé quietly. “I think you need bed, and something to eat. And maybe Peadar.”</p><p>“You’re angry?” asked Jean-Pierre, one feeling, anxiety, making itself known above the rest, and Aimé shook his head.</p><p>“No, ange, not angry. Just worried.”</p><p>“I want to go home,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé nodded his head, pulling Jean-Pierre down and brushing their noses together. “I don’t feel anything,” Jean-Pierre whispers. “I’m just… tired, I don’t want to feel like this, Aimé—”</p><p>“Sleep’ll fix it,” said Aimé. “You know that, ange, you know it’s just a serotonin drop or something. I’ll call us a cab, okay?”</p><p>For some reason, Jean-Pierre hadn’t expected Aimé to arrange for them to go home, even though he had been about to ask, and the tears came hot to his eyes even as Aimé reached for his phone.</p><p>“Fuck,” said Aimé as he pressed Call, and he pulled Jean-Pierre to him, cradled him against his chest as he called for the cab.</p><p>“Sorry,” said Jean-Pierre dully, and Aimé shushed him quietly, rubbing his nose into his hair.</p><p>“Don’t be sorry,” he murmured. “I feel like you do right now all the time. You want me to ask Colm for a bump of coke?”</p><p>“No thank you,” said Jean, and Aimé laughed a little wheezily, squeezing him more tightly.</p><p>“I was kidding, ange, the drop after’d be fucking life-threatening if you’re feeling like this right now. Sleep will help – you need to eat something, too, okay?”</p><p>“You don’t have to look after me.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“I didn’t want to ruin everyone’s night.”</p><p>“You’re not, I was ready to go anyway.”</p><p>“Don’t you want to leave me?” asked Jean-Pierre, and Aimé shook his head, lips rubbing against the top of his forehead. Jean-Pierre didn’t mind that he was bent over slightly, pressed against Aimé’s chest.</p><p>“It’s gonna be alright, baby,” said Aimé quietly, ignoring the question. “You’re not gonna feel like this forever.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre fed his hands more tightly around Aimé’s belly and squeezed.</p><p> *     *     *</p><p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>The next morning, Aimé came downstairs to find that Benedictine and Colm were still lying on the sofa together – Colm had had a lot of difficulties with the stairs, and while Aimé and Asmodeus had both offered to carry him up, he’d just given in and sprawled onto one of the long sofas with Benedictine, arms loosely wrapped around Benedictine’s calves and his head rested against her knees.</p><p>They were still asleep now, Benedictine storing quietly into the crook of her arm and Colm still dozing, cheek rested on his sister’s leg and curled right into her. They were used to sharing a bed – they were all used to it, Aimé knew, all four of them would probably sleep in a pile like puppies, if they were left to it.</p><p>Peadar hadn’t been around last night, but when Aimé opened the door, he came rushing in, and wound his way around Aimé’s feet as Aimé went into the kitchen.</p><p>Asmodeus had brewed coffee already, and the pot was still hot as Aimé poured some for himself.</p><p>“Good morning,” said the angel in question as he came out of the cellar.</p><p>“Needed gunpowder to wake you up?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus gave him a dry look, holding out his mug for Aimé to pour more coffee into.</p><p>“I was checking the poitín for the party later.”</p><p>“Jean-Pierre’s poitín? Is it good?”</p><p>Asmodeus exhaled in what appeared to be relief, and sipped at his own coffee, leaning his head into Peadar’s as he stood up on the counter to bump his cheeks against Asmodeus’ face.</p><p>“It’s very good. Colm’s problem is that he brews it too strong, and I was worried that it was his, I didn’t realise it was Jean’s.”</p><p>“Colm asked him to make it,” said Aimé, trying to rack his brains for when he’d said that. “Said he’d nearly blinded a boy, last time he did it himself.”</p><p>Asmodeus released a low, rueful noise. “Yes,” he murmured. “That’s right. No, Jean-Pierre’s is good, strong, but not dangerously so. In fact, I’d actually say that the taste might be a little too pleasant – he brews very smooth spirits, and one doesn’t like for strong drink to go down too easily.”</p><p>“I’ll tell him when he’s awake, he can add something to it,” said Aimé.</p><p>“He’s alright?” asked Asmodeus, sounding like he knew the answer, and Aimé looked down at his coffee.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had been very quiet in the taxi home, leaning right against Aimé’s body, and he’d not talked much as Aimé had taken him inside, carried him up the stairs. He’d not wanted to eat anything at first, but he’d eaten half the plate Aimé had brought up for him, and when he’d slept, he’d slept <em>deeply</em>.</p><p>“He gets like this at Christmas,” said Asmodeus quietly. “He’s not very good at staying up late at parties – when he’s working, his focus on the work carries him through, but parties are a bit too much. Jean-Pierre requires focused tasks to keep himself in order. Too much time at ease, particularly amongst a crowd, is a sensory overload.”</p><p>“He just does it for attention,” muttered Colm against his sister’s leg. “Everyone’s having a good time instead of paying attention to him, so he says he needs to go home.”</p><p>“Shut the fuck up, Colm,” said Aimé with little heat, and scooped up the cat, laughing as Peadar purred like a little engine in his hands. When Aimé gently tossed him up the stairs, he sprinted up them to seek out Jean-Pierre, and Aimé turned back to Asmodeus. “Will he come out with us tonight?”</p><p>“He doesn’t like to miss a party,” said Asmodeus. “He just gets overwhelmed by them once we come out, if we stay out too long. Tomorrow will be a bit more his pace – and I’m not planning to stay out all night, I’ll be coming back relatively early, so you three can stay out if you really want to. I would have last night, but he’s sensitive to if we seem as though we’re cutting our enjoyment short for his benefit.”</p><p>Aimé looked to Colm, and Colm, sleepily, gave a small nod of his head.</p><p>“He wanted us to bring him home,” said Colm. “But if I’d said to him, hey, if you want to go home, we’ll go home, he’d have freaked the fuck out on me for reading his mind. There’s no winning with him. Stay out and party, he’s upset because we stayed out too long – say we can go home early, I shouldn’t be digging into his head.”</p><p>“What were you digging into his head for?” asked Benedictine in a sleepy mumble, pulling her wrap up where it had fallen almost into her eyes.</p><p>“Coffee, Bene?” asked Aimé, and Benedictine grinned at him, vaguely patting Colm’s head as she sat up on her elbows.</p><p>“I like this boy,” she said, and Aimé chuckled, pouring more coffee into another mug as Asmodeus brewed Colm’s tea. Aimé handed the both of them their mugs, and Benedictine sat up, letting Colm lean his head against her hip.</p><p>“Jean says you’re going to bring your accordion tonight,” said Colm, and Benedictine laughed.</p><p>“I thought you were too good to play that in public,” she said, and Asmodeus gave them both a mildly amused look. “Won’t it ruin your image?”</p><p>“I don’t expect so,” Asmodeus said. “So long as no one shares too much photographic evidence.”</p><p>“You’re such a fucking snob,” said Colm, and Asmodeus gave a neat bow at the waist, nodding as he did so. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then he reached out, touching Aimé’s hip. “He’s awake.”</p><p>“Thanks,” said Aimé in a murmur.</p><p>When he jogged up the stairs a few minutes later, it was to find Jean-Pierre sprawled on his belly with his face mashed into Peadar’s side, nose and forehead pressed directly into Peadar’s thick, ginger fur. Peadar was purring very loudly, and when he saw Aimé he blinked at him slowly and lovingly, and Aimé scratched between his ears.</p><p>“Bonjour, ange,” said Aimé softly. “Ça va?”</p><p>“Oui ça va,” mumbled Jean-Pierre, but although he looked sleepy when he raised his head from Peadar’s belly, he was smiling slightly, and the smile widened and brightened when he saw the pineapple juice in one of Aimé’s hands and the plate of fruit drizzled with honey in the other.</p><p>“Better?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre. “Are they very angry at me?”</p><p>“Who, Colm and Benedictine? Nah, they’re not angry. Colm said one bullshit thing and then reeled it back when I told him to fuck off,” said Aimé, and put the plate down beside Jean, pulling Peadar’s face back when he immediately went to stick his whiskers in it. “I wanted to ask if you still wanted to go to the party tonight.”</p><p>“Of course I do,” said Jean-Pierre, scrunching up his face. “I don’t want not to go.”</p><p>“Asmodeus said he’ll be coming home early tonight, if that helps,” said Aimé, and he was glad to see Jean-Pierre look slightly relieved, shoulders relaxing somewhat, and he sat cross-legged with Peadar pulled up against his chest, using his other hand to pluck pieces of strawberry from the plate and suck them from his fingers.</p><p>“It does,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“You want to do something today?” Aimé asked. “I was thinking we could go to the zoo or—”</p><p>“The gym,” said Jean-Pierre immediately. “We can box. And wrestle, too.”</p><p>Aimé laughed slightly, surprised, and felt his head tilt. It wasn’t expected, but he was glad to see the enthusiasm in Jean-Pierre’s face, glad to see him look so engaged.</p><p>It must have shown in his own face because Jean-Pierre said, “It helps. Exercise.”</p><p>“Yeah, it does,” said Aimé softly. “We can box for as long as you want, ange.”</p><p>“Asmodeus should teach you to dance,” said Jean-Pierre, sucking honey from his fingers, and Aimé blinked, considering this. As far as non-sequiturs went, it was as unexpected as could be.</p><p>“I can strip for you, you know,” said Aimé. “I don’t need the Burlesque King to teach me.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed, shifting to put his feet in Aimé’s lap as Peadar wriggled free, sprawling on the blankets beside them. As Aimé pressed his fingers hard to the flesh on the bottom of Jean-Pierre’s feet, massaging them and watching the way the angel shifted and squirmed, he watched Jean-Pierre’s face, the smile there.</p><p>It was a good smile.</p><p>Aimé couldn’t get over the fact that this was his Christmas, that instead of his sitting stuck with his parents, getting gifts wrong, getting chided for hiding in his own room or for being around other people and saying the wrong things. Instead, it was this: families, parties, Jean-Pierre’s pretty smile.</p><p>“He does dance burlesque, you know,” said Jean-Pierre. “He’s danced at the Moulin Rouge.”</p><p>“Asmodeus can do the can-can, huh?”</p><p>“Yes, of course,” said Jean-Pierre, sliding a raspberry through a smear of honey, “but he doesn’t normally like music so fast-paced. When he does cabaret it’s normally the late evening, he does slower things. He says the slower the dance, the harder it is to control, to show grace while keeping your movements smooth.”</p><p>“You think it’d make me better at wrestling?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre grinned. “I don’t know that it could make you worse.”</p><p>“Can I ask you a question?” Aimé asked, and Jean-Pierre shifted back, chewing the piece of starfruit he’d picked up, licking his fingers very carefully.</p><p>“About why I was upset?” he asked. “About the angels?”</p><p>“Asmodeus told me to ask about that,” said Aimé. “But no, I had a different question. Had a dream last night.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre peered at him, tilting his head to one side. “A prophetic dream, you think?”</p><p>“No, I don’t think so,” said Aimé, laughing. “I had a dream that my dad was declared king, or… Or not declared king, but he had a crown, maybe he was always a king?”</p><p>“And I killed him?” Jean-Pierre asked seriously.</p><p>“No,” said Aimé.</p><p>“I killed you?”</p><p>“No,” laughed Aimé, shaking his head. “You kidnapped me, but you were flying with me – and you were bigger than me, except you were still the same size? But you had me like, under one arm to fly with. I remember how it felt, the way the air like, shot past me.”</p><p>The way that Jean-Pierre’s eyes lit up was somewhere between terrifying and arousing. “You want me to fly with you?” he asked.</p><p>“I wanted to ask why you picked me,” said Aimé. “What made you think… me?”</p><p>“You watched me,” said Jean-Pierre. “You did watch me, you noticed me. You didn’t follow me, didn’t try to— to take me. To demand my attention. You were… non-threatening. I like how you look, there is no lie in that – I like your eyes, and your face, your hair, your belly. Your tits.”</p><p>“I know you like my tits,” said Aimé dryly, but he was surprised how weird it made him feel, Jean-Pierre describing him as non-threatening. He was shorter than Jean, sure, but he was still bigger than him.</p><p>If he’d said that before, he didn’t know if he’d make anything of it, but knowing about Myrddin, that was different, knowing exactly what happened when Jean-Pierre <em>did</em> have someone demanding his attention. It made his stomach give a strange flip.</p><p>“You did stalk me beforehand, though,” said Aimé. “Right?”</p><p>“Mm. I saw what you had on social media. Asked questions. I knew you’d had depressive issues, that you had been a boxer. That your father was rich. I didn’t look more into that until later. It makes me nervous, you know. That your father may try to kill you.”</p><p>“Aw, ange. You’re <em>nervous</em>?” asked Aimé, raising his eyebrows, and Jean-Pierre smiled weakly at him. Aimé was nervous too, sure, but didn’t want to scratch at that scab right now, didn’t want to pick at the issue, not when it’d make him nervous too. Aimé stroked Jean-Pierre’s knee. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Jean-Pierre nodded, and when Aimé asked, “Do you want to talk about the angel thing?”</p><p>“I expect you have surmised the long and short of it,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “We are not approved of within the Embassy, Colm and I. Other angels think we’re frightening.” Jean-Pierre looked down at his knees, pressed them together. “They think I’m frightening,” he amended. “They always used to— We were never involved in angelic communities, either of us. I came from where I came from, and I was already too committed to Jules and Marguerite to put my time into other angels nearby, didn’t want to. And Colm, he stayed with humans in his village for a long time. It was difficult for him, when he was younger, to be around other angels, any immortals. The longer the life, the more feeling, the more memories.”</p><p>He ate the last piece of strawberry from the plate, and licked the honey from the tips of his fingers, pushed the plate aside.</p><p>“But that we weren’t actively involved, we weren’t being ostracised. People thought of us as off-colour, questionable, maybe. In the beginning, we were a little strange, a little unusual; later, we were questionable, because it was an open secret that we are disposed to violence, but it was polite, still, to accept us. Angels aren’t meant to involve ourselves in political things, one way or the other – we have too much power from a lobbyist’s perspective, because our approval can be spun by magical churches as tacit approval by God. It’s bullshit, obviously. It’s really to keep us safe, angels. Neutrality protects us. Asmodeus and the other eldest angels, across millennia they have ensured we have certain legal powers across every country, every earthly magical territory, so that they can move freely, can find new angels as we Fall, and in the event anything goes wrong – if an angel commits a crime, or is a victim of a crime, or if there’s a disaster, many hospitalisations, or… Or something else. It covers a lot of things. De is the ambassador, not me.”</p><p>Aimé watched Jean-Pierre’s face, the expression of quiet concentration on his face as he stroked his hand over Peadar’s fur, his fingers sinking into the thickness of the hair, Peadar’s eyes closed, his mouth open and his tongue sticking slightly out.</p><p>“But until what I did,” said Jean-Pierre quietly, “we were just… <em>weird</em>. A little uncomfortable, maybe, at a fancy party, at an official event. People told jokes about it. About me, about Colm. That we were crazy, explosive. We weren’t appropriate to have at parties in case we killed a guest, except that that was a joke, a tongue-in-cheek piece of commentary. Until, that is, I went on an international stage and killed my fiancé in front of his entire kingdom, and the world. It’s not a joke anymore.” Jean-Pierre pressed his knees tighter together, leaning them into Aimé’s chest, and Aimé kissed each of his knees, lips against the warm skin. “It made a lot of work for Asmodeus, what I did, you know. For the Embassy. It made— It made a lot of angels in sensitive situations very unsafe, because my actions were viewed as potentially representative of all of us. They tried to execute me the same night, and when it didn’t kill me, they wanted to lock me up, and I was… I was so frightened, I was a danger to absolutely everybody until Asmodeus took me away.”</p><p>“Every angel knows Asmodeus,” said Aimé. “All of them.”</p><p>“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“All of them love him?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre opened his mouth. Closed it. “No, not necessarily,” he said slowly. “But he’s— he’s our brother. And he loves all of us.”</p><p>“So every angel knows De, and cares about De, and the fact that Asmodeus lives with you two?”</p><p>“He protects us,” said Jean-Pierre. “More than either of us know, I expect, he protects us. Me especially, I’m more recognisable than Colm. But people associate us together, and sometimes, I think Colm hates that he’s blamed for what I did. That people think of us together.”</p><p>“How do <em>you</em> feel?” Aimé asked. Jean-Pierre was quiet, thoughtful. Sober.</p><p>Aimé wondered, sometimes, with the number of Jean-Pierres he’d seen since knowing him, which of them was the most real – and he wondered how many Jean-Pierres he had yet to meet.</p><p>“I don’t feel guilty for killing Rupert because he was a king,” said Jean-Pierre said slowly. “I don’t like that I did it the way I did. And I feel guilty for how it impacted other angels. I could have had so many of them imprisoned, tortured. Everything short of killed.”</p><p>“Please don’t take me threatening the profits of a private security enterprise with you potentially impacting the safety and security of your entire species,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre began to giggle, “but did you pick me because we have stuff in common? Pádraic told me he thinks we’re the same.”</p><p>“I think we share things in common,” said Jean-Pierre. “But I think that you challenge me. And I think I challenge you, also.”</p><p>“Speaking of,” said Aimé, squeezing Jean-Pierre’s calf, “you want to go now? To the gym?”</p><p>“No,” said Jean stubbornly.</p><p>Aimé sighed long-sufferingly, and gave Jean-Pierre a very tired smile. “You want to have sex?” he asked.</p><p>“Yes, please,” said Jean-Pierre primly, and Aimé pulled Jean-Pierre toward him, touching their noses, their foreheads together. Between their bodies, Peadar released a muffled chirrup.</p><p>“Then he needs to go,” said Aimé, standing and taking up the fruit plate with one hand, and reaching for Peadar with the other.</p><p>“Bye, Peadar,” said Jean-Pierre as Peadar miaowed quietly but let himself be picked up and carried, ridiculous ragdoll of a creature that he was. “I’ll miss you.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, and carried the cat downstairs.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0042"><h2>42. Hot Steam</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>COLM</strong>
</p><p>“This place is fucking shit,” said Benedictine, and Colm laughed as he flicked on more of the top lights in the big room – they were late coming, because Jean and Aimé had come out to the gym straight after breakfast, and Colm and Benedictine had spent the morning on the allotment.</p><p>“It’s clean,” said Colm.</p><p>“But for the bloodstains,” Bene replied, and he punched her in the arm, laughing when she pulled him back and wrapped an arm around his neck, gripping him in a tight headlock. He tried to elbow her in the side, but she twisted her grip, and he sufficed with going limp and dropping her to the floor by making her carry his weight.</p><p>They laughed together, wrestling together on the cold, mostly unstained stone.</p><p>Jean-Pierre and Aimé were in the boxing ring, and both of them were pure drenched in sweat – the more times Aimé met Jean-Pierre in the ring, the better he got at predicting Jean’s moves, and it was no longer the case that Jean-Pierre could put Aimé down in a handful of seconds anymore.</p><p>That was good, Colm thought. Aimé learned quickly, learned everything quickly, and as time went on, he would only learn more, understand more.</p><p>Working in the yard earlier, he had done the most of everything himself, with Benedictine sitting down and watching him, which he didn’t mind. She liked to have a holiday when she came down to them, liked to actually rest, although once they’d gone out to the allotment, she’d joined in the work.</p><p>As much as she hated the wet, mulchy soil in Ireland, he could see she was feeling the cold, and it was easier to keep busy.</p><p>“You like it?” he’d asked. “The house?”</p><p>“It’s nice,” she’d replied. “Small. Cosy. It’s been a long time since I saw Jean-Pierre in school. He’s so… calm. I forget what he’s like, when he is learning, instead of working.”</p><p>“It was different, in Texas,” said Colm.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Benedictine, walking with him toward the shed so that they could head down into the basement. Benedictine was more comfortable down here where it was hot and humid, and she and Colm worked together on the cannabis plants, and the growing row of cacti, too. “I like to see him resting, don’t get me wrong – I know why he works as much as he does. I remember how he used to be, with Benoit, how much he used to worry about how much he works, and now I see him not working, and… Maybe Benoit was wrong.”</p><p>Colm had never been very close with Benoit.</p><p>He’d liked him fine, had thought he was a sound man, but he’d been a weird sort: he was quiet and he smiled a lot, but he was extremely regimented, demanded everything be kept in line, be kept organised. He was kind, thoughtful, and he was always endlessly patient with Jean, even more patient than Asmodeus was.</p><p>Colm had found it creepy, sometimes, how calm Benoit could be, <em>was</em> – even when he was angry, he worked his way through it, put it aside, so fast that Colm couldn’t even follow it, and it was uncomfortable, for a man to really be able to school his feelings like that.</p><p>Benedictine had been close with him, though, and Colm knew that – she’d understood him in a way he didn’t.</p><p>It felt like she understood Jean, too.</p><p>“You miss him a lot,” said Colm.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Benedictine. “He was my brother. Same way that Jean is yours.”</p><p>“I’m not your brother?” asked Colm, and Bene laughed quietly.</p><p>“You know what I mean,” she said.</p><p>Colm took in a slow breath, held it, and then exhaled very slowly, blowing the air out of his mouth. Asmodeus had only been talking about Jean-Pierre last night, talking about him getting overwhelmed at Christmas, but he knew it applied to him too. “Yeah,” he said in a very low voice. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Aimé is good with him the way Benoit was. Knows how to keep a handle on him.”</p><p>“Calls you out on your bullshit, you mean,” she replied, and he huffed out a noise. “I like him,” she went on. “He’s French, and he’s a bastard, but I like him. He has a strong spine, and he <em>thinks</em>. I didn’t care for Farhad – he was an airhead.”</p><p>“Jesus, Bene,” said Colm sharply. “No, he wasn’t.”</p><p>Benedictine shrugged, walking with him to start taking fruit off of the cacti that were bearing them.</p><p>“Not saying he didn’t love Jean,” she said. “But Jean picked him up like you pick a dying dog at the pound. He was easy. A mundie soon to die. It is what he needed at the time – I don’t fault him that. But Aimé is real.”</p><p>“Farhad was real,” Colm muttered, surprised by how much it made him angry, how his gut gave a sharp, sudden twist. “He was a good man. It wasn’t fucking right, the way he died.”</p><p>“No,” Benedictine agreed. “But that’s a separate issue.”</p><p>“You didn’t know him.”</p><p>“What was there to know?”</p><p>Colm twisted away from her, sucking his teeth.</p><p>“I like Aimé,” she said again, not budging on it. “He’s good for Jean – for you too. I’ve never seen Asmodeus like one of Jean’s boyfriends so much, but they are bosom friends, huh? And you like him, and he likes you, isn’t afraid of you. Isn’t afraid of Jean. Must be brain damaged, from the boxing.”</p><p>Colm sniggered.</p><p>“He’s good,” he murmured.</p><p>“Jean is worried his father will kill him,” said Benedictine. “He’s asked me about it, this Luc Deverell. Are you?”</p><p>“Worried?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“He’d kill him,” said Colm, remembering the times he’d been in the same room as Deverell, the times he’d been close enough to skim the thoughts off the top of the man’s head, the cold, clear calculation of them. “He’d rather avoid it, but not out of sentimentality. I don’t think he’ll do it right away, but he’d do it, if he feels he has to. Jean’s right to be worried.”</p><p>Benedictine looked at him thoughtfully, her eyebrows furrowing. “But you aren’t?”</p><p>Colm almost answered right away, but that Benedictine had actually asked meant that the question was probably one considering in a bit more depth, and he held his tongue for a few seconds, considering it. “We have him,” he said simply. “He’s ours now. I won’t let Deverell kill him – nor will Jean. I’d kill him myself before I let him have at Aimé. We won’t let Deverell touch him. And nor will Asmodeus. Even if Deverell was a politician, which he isn’t, he’s just rich and has an influential brand, we’d have at him. He’s a smart guy, but I don’t think he realises how much Aimé is ours now, how seriously we take it.”</p><p>“You do like him,” said Benedictine softly, but she smiled as she said it, and then nodded. It was the stout, purely Benedictine smile that Colm always searched for, that made him feel safe, secure, a stamp of approval. “I won’t let him, either.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>She nudged his elbow with hers. “It’s nothing.”</p><p>Now, Aimé was leaning on the edge of the ring’s ropes, falling over them to stare at the two of them, sweat dripping off him, his hair a wet mop around his head.</p><p>“One of you want to tap in?” he asked, and Colm and Bene both laughed.</p><p>“Seems like you are handling him,” said Benedictine, but she put up her arm and let Aimé pull her up into the ring, bending to slip through the ropes. She kept hold of Aimé’s arm for a second, looking down at him seriously. “Sorry. About last night.”</p><p>Surprised, Aimé looked up at her, and Colm felt the rush of feeling in him, the comparison he had between Benedictine and her brothers in his head – he wasn’t expecting an apology.</p><p>“It’s okay,” said Aimé. “I get that it wasn’t really me you were upset about.”</p><p>Colm felt the familiar pitted grief in Benedictine’s chest even as she gave him a small smile: keeping hold of his arm with her one hand, she squeezed his shoulder with the other, and even if Aimé didn’t see the significance of that embrace, Colm did – and Jean-Pierre did, too.</p><p>“I like this boy, Jean,” said Benedictine. “You have to keep him.”</p><p>“Yes, Bene, I plan to,” said Jean-Pierre, adjusting the wraps on his hands. He was better than he had been last night, no longer a dead pit of nothingness but now alive with feeling: his heart was pumping fast, and he felt exhilarated, satisfied, tired but ready to be exhausted. “Are you going to keep pussyfooting with him, or are you going to face me?”</p><p>Benedictine laughed, clapped Aimé on the back, and let him go. Colm held out Aimé’s bottle for him as he dropped out of the ring, and Aimé grinned his lopsided grin, taking it and swigging heavily from it as he dropped onto his feet.</p><p>“Where’s De?” he asked, and Aimé rolled his shoulders, stretching out his desk.</p><p>“You can’t feel him?”</p><p>“Well, I could reach out and feel everyone in this place aching and tired at once, but—”</p><p>“He’s in the pool,” said Aimé, then pulled Colm’s wrist toward him, looking at his watch. “I think, anyway – he was going to go in the pool and then the sauna, he said, but he was arguing with Polydorus for fucking ages about the state of the studio.”</p><p>“It’s not a studio,” said Colm. “It’s a box with laminate floors and a mirror on one side.”</p><p>“You’ve heard this talk before, then?” asked Aimé, and Colm sniggered. “I fucking hadn’t. I wondered why Jean got bored so quickly.”</p><p>“You want to come in the sauna?” asked Colm.</p><p>“Yeah, let me shower first and I’ll come sit with you,” said Aimé. “You don’t want to box?”</p><p>“I might after. You want to do some knifework?”</p><p>“Yeah, I was about to ask,” said Aimé, and Colm patted him on the shoulder as he went out of the room, moving through the dimly-lit labyrinths of the gym’s corridors to find the pool.</p><p>They almost always, when they had a regular gym, went to Hellenist-run places like this one – that the corridors weren’t lit with rows of painfully bright fluorescent lights was frankly a relief, and Colm liked that you could choose between the more modern exercise machines and just having space to exercise in, with weights, with the ring, with a place for archery and throwing knives.</p><p>The pool, though, was definitely the best part of all – Jean-Pierre wouldn’t, <em>couldn’t</em> swim in one of the heavily chlorinated pools without having some kind of reaction, whether it was going into the room and immediately starting to cough, or managing to hold his breath and then coming out in hives once he swam for more than a few minutes. And honestly, Colm didn’t care for chlorine either: if he could choose, he’d prefer a good-sized pond or reservoir, or best of all, to swim in the sea, but it was far too busy around Dublin for all that, even if you found somewhere that wasn’t filthy.</p><p>This was a wonderful middle ground: the pool was huge, by far the largest part of the gym and taking up the entirety of the bottom basement level, and a little of the one above it.</p><p>When you first walked in on the second floor, there were changing rooms to one side, and a small pool with a cut out of it that showed into the larger pool below, creating a waterfall and a fun drop if you liked that sort of thing. As Colm walked by, he could see a few kids paddling in the small pool, doing lengths between the steps and the shrine to Nike.</p><p>The pool was circular in shape, and the cut out of it was a crescent that look up about a quarter of its size, and from a little island downstairs grew a dryad’s tree, the branches spreading out on this floor, so that some of her branches brushed the head of Nike’s statue.</p><p>He’d met the dryad, a woman named Philaenis, and he knew that she took care of the pool.</p><p>It was a saltwater pool, edged on the bottom floor with sand on two sides instead of stone, and although the upstairs one had tiles, the main pool didn’t: the bottom, if you dived down the twelve or so metres to touch it, was more sand that grew thick with kelp and seaweed, and small fish swam in amongst it all.</p><p>Colm had been glad he could teach George to swim in proper, clean water instead of chlorine, although it did mean when he did go for a swim with Bedelia at the fancy place she went to for her jiu-jitsu classes, that he’d kicked up a fuss about it after.</p><p>He dropped his clothes into a locker and sealed it with his palm before he went downstairs, his towel slung over his shoulder.</p><p>This part, Colm knew, Aimé wasn’t quite used to – the first time he’d seen one of the old Greek vampires with his cock trussed up in string to keep it from flopping about as he jogged on the treadmill, he’d thought it was a chastity thing, and Colm had laughed so hard he wheezed after. It wasn’t to say everyone went naked – no one kicked up a fuss at people who wore gym clothes or a swimsuit – but Colm had noticed that most people in the downstairs pool and its offshoots went naked, whether they were immortals who’d never learned to get used to swimsuits, or whether it was just Hellenists or fae who’d grown up not thinking anything of it.</p><p>The pool was decently busy, a lot of people scattered around the edges talking to one another, a group of young women laughing and tossing a ball between each other to one corner, and Colm scanned the different people swimming, saw different people’s legs, their tails.</p><p>Asmodeus was running lengths, perfectly straight in the water as he did a measured, even front crawl. Colm knew from experience that Asmodeus could swim a lot faster than that, but he just liked the tension in his muscles and the feel of the water when he swam like this.</p><p>Colm dropped down to sit at the edge, arse on the cold stone, as Asmodeus swam slowly toward him, keeping his towel around his neck so it wouldn’t get wet.</p><p>“This your water?” Colm asked.</p><p>“Please,” said Asmodeus, steadying himself on Colm’s knee instead of on the pool’s edge, and Colm passed him the bottle, watching Asmodeus take a few swallows before he handed it back and reached up, pushing his hair out of his eyes.</p><p>Colm was so used to Asmodeus’ hair, thick, black, sleek, and always very neatly parted to one side, that he always forgot how it looked like this, wet and a little bit messy.</p><p>It was easy to forget that Asmodeus made himself perfect, that he wasn’t like that by default.</p><p>“Is everyone else still wrestling?” Asmodeus asked, leaning back as he tread water, and Colm nodded.</p><p>“Benedictine and Aimé swapped places – he’s going to jump in the sauna with us.”</p><p>Asmodeus nodded, closing his eyes and staying in his place. “I’m getting Jean-Pierre a dog.”</p><p>Colm looked at Asmodeus’ face, shifting his own feet in the water. A part of him wanted to be irritated at Jean-Pierre getting his way, at Asmodeus spoiling Jean-Pierre, at the thought that he might have to take care of the dog too. That, he refused to admit, was quite a small part of him: the rest of him thrilled, was excited at the idea of having a dog again, as much as he liked Peadar and the other neighbourhood cats that hung around.</p><p>“For Christmas?” he asked.</p><p>“I was going to bring her around on Boxing Day anyway, but now that you two know about the ice-skating I’m setting that doubly in stone. She’s a Pyrenean Mountain Dog, three months old. Her name’s Brigid. I’m going to bring her around to the house in the morning, surprise him when and Aimé when they get up, and let her meet everyone, see the house. If it’s a good fit, we can bring her home later in the week.”</p><p>“They bark a lot,” said Colm. “He’ll complain about the noise.”</p><p>“Well, he’s always the one that trains them,” pointed out Asmodeus, opening his eyes to look at Colm, not sternly, but with a kind of frank expectation. “If you want her to learn to quieten down quicker, I expect you’ll have to join in.”</p><p>“I always walk the dogs,” said Colm. “And feed them.”</p><p>“Yes, you do,” said Asmodeus, smiling slightly, “but you’re the same way Jean-Pierre is about it, and you know that. Well-behaved dogs aren’t born that way, Colm. You have to teach them.”</p><p>“We coming back to you criticising my parenting style again?” asked Colm, more coldly than he meant to, and Asmodeus’ brow furrowed, his lips shifting into a small frown.</p><p>“No,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that, and I think you know it.”</p><p>“Who’ll take care of the dog when me and Jean are in Berlin?”</p><p>“Oh, I asked Pádraic if he and Bedelia would take her on days that Aimé and I are both working. She’ll need to get used to them anyway, if they dog-sit whenever you two are away, and it will be good for her to be exposed to the chickens. She’s from a farm with livestock, ewes and a few goats, mostly, but I think early exposure to poultry is better than later.”</p><p>Colm nodded.</p><p>He wanted to point out, as he’d done before, that Asmodeus tended to bring a dog home when Jean-Pierre was at his worst, and he wanted to ask if he thought that was now, if Jean was really doing all that badly. He settled on asking, “Were you planning this for a while?”</p><p>“I thought a dog would be good once you settled here,” said Asmodeus quietly. “I admit, I was thinking something more dramatic, coming home from a while away and surprising you all with a dog upon my return, but I do think it’s best now. Not just for Jean – for you too. I think you need it too, and I know it’ll already be a big change when Heidemarie comes home with us later on, but she likes dogs, and I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a contributing factor.</p><p>“With that said, if she’s amenable, the farmer we’re adopting Brigid from knows a vampire who trains service dogs, and if Heidemarie would be open to it, I would ask you to consider letting me put you into contact. I know she doesn’t like relying on people for help, asking for things, but a dog is different, and I think she’s missed being able to have a dog again. Being prevented, I mean, by the children.”</p><p>There was a tight sensitivity in Asmodeus’ voice, one that Colm could actually hear and make out – perhaps he recognised it so easily because there was a similar tightness in his own chest, a thickness in his throat and around his eyes. It was more than just grief, for Asmodeus – Colm knew damn well how much he hated seeing someone’s wings clipped, and he was angry about Heidemarie and her kids.</p><p>“I think that’s a good idea,” he murmured. “I think she’ll like that.”</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>“You weren’t going to tell us about the meet-up at all,” said Colm – a question, not a statement.</p><p>Asmodeus considered it before he answered, and then said, “I don’t expect I would have, no. No more than I’d tell you about lectures I’m giving, classes I’m teaching, other events I’m taking part in.”</p><p>“It’s not the same as other events you take part in,” Colm said, his mouth tasting like copper. “It’s not the same as knowing we’d be bored shitless by some celebrity event you’re doing.”</p><p>“No,” Asmodeus agreed. “And it is precisely because the two aren’t the same that I didn’t tell you. It’s one thing to bore you two with the intricacies of my commitments – it’s another to bring up an event you might like to attend, but would never be welcome at. You know I don’t do these things to cut you.”</p><p>“I just thought they’d be like us, that’s all,” said Colm. “George and Bedelia. Pádraic is.”</p><p>“Pádraic isolates himself by choice, and he does so because he doesn’t agree with the political standpoints of the Embassy – he’s too much of a communist to prop up what he thinks is a statement in itself of hypocrisy. I don’t fault him for that – and equally, I don’t fault Bedelia for feeling a sense of gratitude at being allowed the kinship she’s wanted for so long. It’s <em>hard</em> for angelic children, Colm, and it hurts me that I can’t fix it from the get-go, but I saw that George was an opening – though I’d have put him into contact with them anyway – and I engineered things as best I could to let her slip in. I’m very glad it’s turned out the way it has for the two of them. They’re young, new, uncertain. They deserve to feel that the family loves and accepts them.”</p><p>“We’re not family enough?” asked Colm.</p><p>Asmodeus put his hand on Colm’s knee again, and squeezed it, his thumb sliding over where the skin was shiny from long-burned petrol. Colm was fully aware that people were looking at his scars as they moved past in the room, and did his best to tune it all out, to focus on Asmodeus.</p><p>“Colm, I love you and Bene and Jean-Pierre very dearly, more dearly than I love anybody else alive,” said Asmodeus. “But if ever it seemed to me that Bedelia and George, that any other angel, had to choose between associating with you two, and Benedictine and her little army, wherein they should have to pick up a rifle to continue that association, or cut off all ties forever, you know precisely which recommendation I would make.”</p><p>He met Colm’s eyes to say it, didn’t look away or break his gaze, and a cold rush ran down Colm’s spine that made him shudder. “Yeah,” he said: his voice croaked, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah. I know.”</p><p>“I know it’s hard,” said Asmodeus. “That they have what you don’t anymore.”</p><p>“It’s not that,” said Colm. “It’s what they’ll tell George. What they’ll tell Bedelia.”</p><p>“Oh, Colm,” said Asmodeus softly, and pulled himself to the edge of the pool. “You really think they don’t already know?”</p><p>Colm didn’t know what to say in response to that, but it turned out that he didn’t have to – Aimé had come into the pool, and as Colm and Asmodeus got to their feet, he walked up to them, one towel wrapped around his waist – although Colm could see the waistband of his trunks – and another around his shoulders.</p><p>About a metre away from them, he stopped, blinked, and stared down at Colm and Asmodeus’ bodies. Aimé had seen Colm a bit undressed before, but admittedly, not with his cock out, and nor, Colm didn’t think, had he seen the full extend of the scars spattered over his belly, his chest, his thighs, some of his old tattoos half lost in the mess.</p><p>Asmodeus, of course, had no scars and no tattoos, either – but it was him that Aimé was staring at most, frozen completely still.</p><p>The two of them gave it a few seconds, and Colm really didn’t think it was much of an insult, or anything creepy – Aimé wasn’t moving a muscle, frozen like a deer in front of one incredibly large headlight, and in fairness to him, Colm could tell he wasn’t doing excellently with critical thought in the moment.</p><p>“You know,” said Asmodeus, breaking the spell and making Aimé burn red, cringe, and crumple into himself all at once, “Colm and I have quite nice eyes, too. You might like to look up at them.”</p><p>“Jesus Christ,” muttered Aimé, putting his face in his hands, and Asmodeus laughed. “Is that thing even legal?”</p><p>“I have a license to carry,” said Asmodeus, and Colm’s snort of laughter caught him by surprise, making him cough. The embarrassment radiating from Aimé was too funny to be contagious, let alone the fact that when Asmodeus stepped closer, Aimé buried his face in his elbows instead of his hands, and Asmodeus laughed at him and shoved him in the hand.</p><p>“Would you <em>cover up</em>?” Aimé demanded through laughter. “How the fuck do you do ballet with that? Wrap it around your leg?”</p><p>“I wear a cup,” said Asmodeus.</p><p>“They make cups that big?”</p><p>“He gets them made,” said Colm, and he and Aimé both laughed at Asmodeus this time, who frowned. “Anyway, we’re not covering up, we’re going in the sauna without wearing three layers of fabric like you.”</p><p>“Aren’t Catholics meant to be modest?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“I’m standing naked next to Asmodeus, lad, I’m about as humble as they come right now.”</p><p>“You’re not bad, bigger than me,” said Aimé, and his leering look was in jest: it made Colm snigger and shove him, and Aimé shoved him back, grinning widely. “What, can’t take a compliment?”</p><p>“Fuck off, city prick,” said Colm.</p><p>“Culchie.”</p><p>“I’m happier a culchie than a fucking West Brit,” retorted Colm, and Aimé let out a wounded noise before Colm slapped Aimé on the arse through the towel, shoving him ahead of him as they walked into the sauna.</p><p>“So nice to see you boys play nice,” said Asmodeus, and Aimé gave him the finger at the same time Colm said, “Fuck off, De.”</p><p>It was hot in the sauna, and as soon as they went inside Colm saw Aimé groan quietly, rolling his shoulders. Colm sat down in one of the corners, so he could see the rest of the room, and Aimé sat down beside him, shoulders falling against the wall as Asmodeus sat down on the bench across from them.</p><p>“What’s that sign say?” asked Aimé, pointing to a sign in old Greek over the door, and Asmodeus glanced back to look at it, then chuckled.</p><p>“Uh… It’s not easy to translate pithily, but the sentiment is that if you leave any unexpected puddles behind, it is your responsibility to clean them, and that if you do not, the management reserves the right to drag you back in by your ear and make you clean them up with your tongue.”</p><p>Aimé’s face passed through several expressions in succession, before settling on a weary disgust.</p><p>“This place is so fucking weird,” he said.</p><p>“If it helps,” said Asmodeus, “I think they’re mostly joking.”</p><p>“That doesn’t help, actually,” said Aimé. “That you have to clarify to me that it’s a joke does not help at all – I <em>assumed</em> it was a joke until you said that. That’s definitely worse.”</p><p>“You want me to pop any muscles back?” asked Colm, and Aimé shook his head.</p><p>“I’m okay, actually – I’m mostly tired more than sore. We wrestled for a while before we boxed, and I think that helped me stop tightening my stance the way I normally do. Jean says you should teach me to dance, De.”</p><p>Asmodeus glanced at him, interested. “You want to learn?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Aimé. “I don’t think I could do ballet, not like you guys – you, Jean. Bedelia. Do you do ballet?”</p><p>“Yeah, I do ballet,” said Colm sarcastically. “I conduct symphonies, too, play the cello. Sing opera.”</p><p>Aimé, straight-faced, asked politely, “You can sing?”</p><p>“<em>Cunt,”</em> said Colm, shoving Aimé in the head and making him laugh. He liked how comfortable Aimé felt like this, how at ease he was, the good mood that radiated from him, and the affection that he felt for Asmodeus and Colm both.</p><p>Across from them, Asmodeus was smiling a distant, fond smile.</p><p>“We can have a look at dance in the new year, if you like,” said Asmodeus. “I’d invite you to join one of the special classes I do from time to time at an academy, as I do for Jean, but I’m afraid it would be a little advanced for a beginner.”</p><p>“He good?” asked Aimé. “Jean?”</p><p>Colm watched Asmodeus’ face, the subtle shifts in his expression, almost invisible. In them, he saw almost nothing, too distracted by the great <em>nothingness</em> that radiated out from De; beside him, he felt Aimé’s curiosity, his assumption that De was going to avoid the question or twist it.</p><p>“It pains me sometimes to watch Jean-Pierre dance,” said Asmodeus. “I feel the same way watching him play violin – he could be truly very great, if it ever suited him to devote himself to it.”</p><p>“What, give up medicine and put on a tutu instead?” asked Aimé, and Colm actually winced, watching Asmodeus go cold, setting his jaw. Aimé, to Colm’s surprise, noticed the shift in Asmodeus’ mood but didn’t flinch away – he just shrugged.</p><p>“Not saying ballet’s not important, or music. I know you love that stuff. And he’s said how much it’s helped him, learning an instrument, with his discipline, with his mood, that it made him a better doctor. I assume dance has done the same. But it’s his life, De – and he’s a good doctor, right?”</p><p>“The best,” said Asmodeus quietly, softening a little, and Colm reached out, curling his fingers in Aimé’s sweat-soaked hair, prompting Aimé to look at him askance. “You two are going back in the ring after this?”</p><p>“Gonna practice a little more with the throwing knives,” said Colm. “Thought we could try an axe, if you want – you’re getting more accurate with the knives, you’re getting better at using the right muscles.”</p><p>Aimé made a face. “Are axes easier to throw?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Can you throw knives?” Aimé asked De, and Asmodeus nodded.</p><p>“Mostly, I can juggle,” he said. “Although I try not to embarrass myself too terribly in public.”</p><p>“What, by dropping stuff?”</p><p>“By juggling.”</p><p>“Heidi was unbearable after he taught her to juggle,” said Colm. “Nothing was safe. Pens, knives, apples, plates.”</p><p>“I taught her to spin them too,” Asmodeus murmured, and Colm groaned.</p><p>“You fucking did not,” he said. “If you’d taught her, I’d not have been picking up shards every time she tried.”</p><p>“Were you <em>trying</em> to train her for the circus?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus laughed, leaning back in his seat.</p><p>“No, but she didn’t care to dance, didn’t much like to sing, wasn’t hugely interested in any of the instruments I play. I taught her card shuffles, some sleight of hand, to juggle, spin plates. Some minor gymnastics, which she took to more than dance – it’s all the same sphere of physical work, to do with dexterity, muscular control.”</p><p>“Can you do trapeze?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Yes,” said Asmodeus. “But trapeze work is best done with a few strong partners – it’s not as fun, alone. I don’t think, anyway.”</p><p>Aimé crossed his arms over his chest, and asked, “You can do the splits?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Put your leg over your head?”</p><p>“Yes.</p><p>“Behind your head?”</p><p>“Yes. Is this leading somewhere?”</p><p>“Not really,” said Aimé. “I’m just trying to think of something you might not be good at.”</p><p>“Watching a whole movie without starting to read a book instead,” said Colm.</p><p>“Not being smug,” agreed Aimé. “Owning a phone. Or a computer.”</p><p>“Singing a song written after 1960.”</p><p>“Are you two quite finished?” asked Asmodeus.</p><p>Aimé sighed, looking at Colm. “He’s perfect, isn’t he?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Colm resignedly, and the two of them shared a sad nod.</p><p>“Twats,” said Asmodeus succinctly, and Aimé and Colm’s laughter echoed off the tile.</p><p>Asmodeus smiled with them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0043"><h2>43. Powder and Feathers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>AIMÉ</strong>
</p><p>They all went out to the allotment before the party. From the allotment, they were going to walk over to Pádraic and Bedelia’s, because they were all going to pile into the back of Pádraic’s minivan, which Aimé was certainly looking forward to, given that of their party, half of them was over six foot tall.</p><p>He was expecting to be one of the early drop-outs with Jean-Pierre and Asmodeus, if Colm and Bene didn’t drag him out with them, George, and Bedelia, and Pádraic had already said he’d be going home at eleven, and was happy to drive whoever wanted driving home.</p><p>He, like Jean-Pierre, could barely stomach any alcohol at all, and had been content to be nominated as designated driver.</p><p>It was a cool afternoon, too damp to be frosty, and as Aimé sat back in one of the plastic lawn chairs Colm had stacked up in his shed, Jean-Pierre shivering in his lap – although Aimé was pretty sure a lot of this shivering was for reasons of theatre, because when he’d been arguing with Colm a second ago about what sort of sparrows they were looking at, he’d forgotten to keep doing it – he sipped at a glass of wine.</p><p>Asmodeus wasn’t sitting down, but standing beside them. Aimé couldn’t imagine him sitting down in a plastic chair, and half-expected the things to morph into something more stately as soon as his arse touched the seat, or perhaps burst into flames.</p><p>Ahead of them, Colm was showing sketches he had on a piece of paper to Benedictine and pointing out the ends of the land, telling her what he planned to build where, showing where Heidemarie’s bedroom would go, where he’d put the second bedroom, talking about how he’d plumb the bathrooms.</p><p>Jean-Pierre had twisted himself in Aimé’s lap so that as much of his body as possible was crammed against Aimé’s, his knees curled into Aimé’s chest, his chin on top of Aimé’s head and Aimé’s head pressed against the silk of Jean-Pierre’s shirt, Jean’s fingers absently playing with Aimé’s hair as he scrolled on his phone. His wings were out, curling around them in a warm cowl, and Aimé was enjoying the fresh air, the taste of the wine he and De were sharing, the smell of frankincense and citrus from Jean’s feathers.</p><p>With a sort of casual boredom, Jean-Pierre was swiping through a gallery of erect cocks, examining them with the same critical expression Aimé had seen him wear whilst scrutinising fabric to buy for Colm’s Christmas present, or while looking through a menu.</p><p>“Which one is Gavin Swift’s?” asked Aimé, and Jean-Pierre scrolled back through his phone to show him. Jean-Pierre had said before that the guy in his choir soc had a thick-looking cock, and looking at a photo of it, Aimé felt his eyebrows raise, his lips parting. It was a short cock, a little shorter than Aimé’s own, which was maybe below average, but it was thick around as a can of something, and Aimé put on a thoughtful expression, sliding his fingers between Jean’s thighs and pressing at his cunt through his jeans. “Mmm, I don’t know…”</p><p>“I can stretch,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Yeah? How— <em>Ow</em>, De, the fuck!?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre laughed at him as Aimé reached up to rub the back of his head where Asmodeus had smacked him, the movement so lightning-fast that Asmodeus’ hands were already back at his sides, one holding his wineglass and the other loosely looped in his pocket. He must have reached <em>over</em> Jean-Pierre’s wing to do it, and Aimé was furious that he found himself impressed.</p><p>“I’m right here, you know,” said De.</p><p>“Yeah, like you’re shocked your brother has sex, why didn’t you hit <em>him</em>?”</p><p>“Hitting doesn’t work with him,” said Asmodeus with a slight smirk pulling at his lips, watching Colm and Bene instead of them. “I have my hopes it might with you.”</p><p>“Anyway,” said Jean-Pierre said, “it looks like it will hurt.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Aimé agreed, and when De glanced at him, he put his hands up as though there was a gun pointed at him, showing he wasn’t putting his hands anywhere he shouldn’t, Asmodeus laughed. “He send you those?”</p><p>“No,” said Jean-Pierre. “He shares them in a group chat with Corey Mendel, you know the American boy with the stretchers in his ears?”</p><p>“Should I?”</p><p>“Well, these are his and his friends’ cocks, and Corey is in the same chat, so he shows them to me.”</p><p>“You’re disgusting, you know that?”</p><p>“They know the risk when they send the photos,” said Jean-Pierre breezily, and Aimé looked up at Asmodeus.</p><p>“You don’t have anything to say about this?” he asked.</p><p>“It’s a breach of consent, Jean,” said Asmodeus blankly, without looking at him. Aimé didn’t get the impression that he didn’t care – if anything, Asmodeus’ dry, irritated tones implied to Aimé that this was a point he’d discussed before, albeit unhappily.</p><p>“I don’t care,” said Jean.</p><p>“Happy?” asked De, taking a sip of his wine.</p><p>“As a clam,” muttered Aimé sarcastically, and took Jean-Pierre’s phone so that he could look through the gallery himself, trying to see which ones he recognised when Jean-Pierre told him their names.</p><p>Asmodeus went to speak with Colm and Benedictine when Colm waved him over, and Aimé stroked Jean-Pierre’s lower back as he scrolled through his phone. Jean-Pierre, true to form, kept his  stolen dick pics in neat folders and subfolders, because of course he did.</p><p> Two of the biggest cocks belonged to Gavin Swift’s roommates, he was happy to see. “Are any of them gay?”</p><p>“I’m beautiful,” said Jean-Pierre. “What does it matter if they’re gay or not?”</p><p>“You’re right, babe, how could I forget that the world and the universe revolves around your cunt?”</p><p>“I’m not saying it does,” said Jean-Pierre primly. “It is merely that they both would, if they had any sense.”</p><p>Aimé should have been irritated with that – he should have been angry, should have found Jean-Pierre tiresome and petty and more than a bit evil, and instead he felt full to the brim with a warm, satisfied feeling, and he realised he was looking very lovingly at Jean-Pierre when Jean looked at Aimé’s face and looked disgustingly pleased with himself.</p><p>“I hate you,” said Aimé.</p><p>“You love every part of me,” said Jean-Pierre confidently. “Desperately and with uninhibited fervour.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t say uninhibited,” said Aimé, but when Jean-Pierre leaned to kiss him he smiled, and laughed softly into Jean-Pierre’s mouth. He didn’t miss the slight catch in Jean-Pierre’s face when he leaned back from him, and he reached up, cupping the sides of Jean’s cheeks and sliding his thumbs over the smooth, soft skin of his cheeks, touching the scar under his eye. “Jean?”</p><p>“Ouais?”</p><p>“I’d like to see Gavin Swift fuck you open.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s slightly tight mask of glee shifted into something that was both more honest and softer: his eyes widened slightly, his lips parting as his smile upturned at their edges.</p><p>“He watches me,” said Jean-Pierre. “In the corridors when he sees me, he watches me – and Corey said one of them put a picture of my arse in the chat because he mistook me for a woman and they were admiring my thighs.”</p><p>“Have you had sex with Corey Mendel?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“No,” said Jean-Pierre. “But he sent me a video of him touching himself – would you like to see?” He scrolled back through his phone history with him, passing his phone back to Aimé, and instead of pressing play on the video, Aimé scrolled back up through the message history, vaguely interested.</p><p>Jean-Pierre used emojis, made jokes, pasted in memes. When Corey started talking about being horny and thinking about Jean-Pierre’s arse, Jean-Pierre, if anything, sounded politely interested, and while Jean’s side of the conversation was various emojis in reply to pictures and then the videos of Corey’s cock, it almost struck Aimé that he didn’t even care.</p><p>“Didn’t you sent him pictures back?” he asked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre frowned as though the question was a complicated one, and he looked at Aimé thoughtfully, his head tilting to the side. “No,” he said. “I’ve never done that before – I wouldn’t know how to take enticing photos myself, and Corey Mendel isn’t all that attractive and his cock is too small, so I don’t see the point of going to the effort with him.” Jean-Pierre smiled then, sliding his hands over Aimé’s upper chest and then up to his shoulders, thumbs coming up to slide against his neck on each side. Aimé’s cock was half-hard underneath Jean-Pierre’s weight in his lap, and Jean-Pierre’s smile was a sly, filthy thing. “Would you like for me to send photos of myself to other men?”</p><p>“See, that’s bait,” said Aimé. “You want me to say, yes, I would, of course I would, Jean, that makes my dick hard, and then you want to say that if it makes my dick hard, I’ll have to take the photos to make sure that you only send ones I approve of, which, yes, is also <em>extremely</em> hot, but I feel like the end of this line is not, as I’d like it to be, you texting people pictures of my cock in you or my come on your skin, but you texting people <em>paintings</em> I’ve done of you with a cock in you or otherwise.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s cheeks were blooming like roses with red pigment, and the smile on his face was full of what looked like wonder as much as delight.</p><p>“Would you think me very spoilt indeed, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre, “if I told you I would like to have both?”</p><p>Aimé pulled him down by the chin into another kiss, and Jean-Pierre’s fingers carded in Aimé’s hair on each side, his wings tightening in around them like a little privacy shroud.</p><p>“You really expect me to believe you’ve never sexted?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“I have,” said Jean-Pierre. “I found phone sex very exciting at its advent, when it was new. I just haven’t sent photographs of myself – it’s such effort.”</p><p>Aimé laughed, squeezing Jean-Pierre’s hips and bouncing his knees to make Jean-Pierre unsteady, making him giggle too, almost losing his balance until he spread his wings a little wider to keep himself in place. “Is that what this is, then? Outsourcing labour?”</p><p>“I’m not an artist, Aimé, which I have told you before – I am art. I am very content to model, but photography is not among my passions.” He curled a lock of Aimé’s hair around his fingers, playing it around and around. He was a little more serious when he said, “And I don’t really care. If a man wants to touch himself over me his imagination likely suffices, and I like for people to gossip, I like…” Jean-Pierre trailed off for a moment, tipping himself forward, his nose sliding against Aimé’s own. “I like for there to be an ambiguity in my appearance, as people see it. The mystique makes me more desirable.”</p><p>“You don’t need mystique to be desirable,” said Aimé. “I’ll paint you a thousand times if you want me – you can pay your commissions fee in blowjobs. And you’ll have to pose.”</p><p>“I think we can kill two birds with one stone if you learn to take photographs of me,” said Jean-Pierre. “Then you can paint from those.”</p><p>“That mean no blowjobs?”</p><p>“I love you,” said Jean-Pierre, and Aimé squeezed his hip again.</p><p>“You think if I do some nice ones they’ll put them up in an exhibit about angels?”</p><p>“Which nice parts of me are you thinking you might paint?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“Which nice parts do you think?”</p><p>“I like to be painted,” said Jean-Pierre softly. “I like to have my skin painted, touched – I like to be admired as a piece of art. May I tell you a secret?”</p><p>“Yeah, course. Always. Especially now – it’s Christmas.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre smiled slightly. “It’s easier to be art, sometimes,” he said in a very soft voice, curling into Aimé and looking over the curve of his own wing, to where Colm and Benedictine and Asmodeus were talking together as though to make sure Colm wasn’t listening. “Aimé.”</p><p>“Yeah, babe?”</p><p>“It is nice to be made object, at times. It is… <em>freeing</em> to be made free of personhood.”</p><p>“Why do I feel like this is a little more than the normal BDSM philosophy?” asked Aimé, and curved his hand up around Jean-Pierre’s back, sliding his thumb gently over the line of his spine. Jean-Pierre didn’t make eye contact, but Aimé could glimpse his face looking up at it, the twist of his lips, the uncomfortably familiar distance in his eyes.</p><p>“You know it is complicated,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “Myrddin held me captive, but before that, it… Colm blames me, he says it’s my fault.”</p><p>“It’s not your fault,” said Aimé immediately, and Jean-Pierre bit his lip.</p><p>“He never treats me as an object, Aimé,” said Jean-Pierre. “If he did, I think I could bear it. But he doesn’t. He sees me as a person, a man – an assassin, an angel, a beastly person, but a person. And he…” Jean-Pierre’s voice had a tightness in it, a slight catch, when he said, “Aimé, I believe Myrddin Wyllt sees me as an equal.”</p><p>“Because we all hold our equals hostage in the hopes they give into Stockholm Syndrome?” Aimé asked sharply, more sharply than he meant to, because it made Jean-Pierre’s features tighten.</p><p>“If he thought anything less of me,” said Jean-Pierre, “I don’t know if he would have gone to the trouble.”</p><p>It made Aimé’s whole chest clench, the look on Jean’s face, the quiet tightness in his voice. It made him want to put his hands around the king regent’s neck and tear his throat out with his bare hands, and to his distant, disgusted surprise he almost craved the brutality of it, the feel of breaking skin and hot blood sticky and wet on his hands, the choked cough and yelp that would come from Wyllt’s throat as he did it.</p><p>“You’re angry with me,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“No, I’m not,” said Aimé.</p><p>“You are. You think I cannot read your face?”</p><p>“You certainly can read my face – you can read in my face that I’m fucking furious and I want to kill a man. Do you think it’s more likely I want to kill you or him?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre closed his mouth, adjusting and then readjusting Aimé’s shirt collar. “I think of it because of our discussions of your father of late, that it frightens me that he should kill you – but as you have your pursuer, I have mine. It seems to me I should be forthright in this. For better or for worse.”</p><p>“Want me to marry you?” asked Aimé. He meant it as a joke – a half-serious one, a half-genuine one. It didn’t make Jean-Pierre smile the way Aimé wanted it to.</p><p>“One would think given what happened to my first and final fiancé that you would not wish to follow in his footsteps.”</p><p>“Well, I know his mistake,” said Aimé. “He didn’t actually marry you.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre sniggered, but didn’t entirely relax. “When Farhad was dying, in the last two or three weeks, the pneumonia had begun to take hold. It was a very difficult time for me. I had nursed Jules through illnesses before, Benoit too, and it so aggrieves me to linger with a dying lover. Bui died of tuberculosis, and it was... The setting was very different, an American hospital room and on a mundane AIDs ward, no less, with sometimes such unkind and cruel staff at times – because we were gay, because he was Persian, on top of the hatred they already had for his illness. I was…”</p><p>Jean-Pierre’s eyes were watering, and Aimé reached up to wipe his eyes, careful not to do it too hard.</p><p>“It wasn’t at Christmas,” said Jean-Pierre. “We’d had Christmas together at least, managed not to have it in hospital. I don’t know why I think of it so much at Christmas time. It was February, but it was very mild, at least – it wasn’t the cold that made him… Farhad never knew what we were, really, not me, not Colm or Asmodeus. He knew so little of anything, he was in many ways an innocent, which I suppose is why his death was quite so agonising. He wasn’t like any of my other lovers, he didn’t… He had a very, very untrue idea of who and what I was. He knew that when he came, Myrddin, I think. I came into the hospital room to find him sitting at Farhad’s bedside, telling him things, and I don’t even know if Farhad really understood – he was sick and crazed with fever, coughing out his lungs, his skin a thin film over his bones because his bones were all he had left. And there was Myrddin at his side, telling him his loving boyfriend was a murderer and a monster. Apologising that said boyfriend’s affection for himself was no doubt a shadow on his relationship.”</p><p>Jean-Pierre was glassy-eyed, buried in the memory.</p><p>Aimé felt sick.</p><p>“He didn’t understand it,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “How could he? A mundie who didn’t know the difference between ward and spell strike, let alone the ins and outs of magical politics, that he had the king regent of two influential kingdoms at his bedside, and ordinarily had a king slayer in his bed. All he knew was that he was being told upsetting things about a man he loved, things he didn’t want to believe, that he couldn’t believe – things that confused him.” He stifled a sob, and Aimé squeezed his waist, not looking away from him. “There was no need for it. He remembered it only in snatches in the days after, which distressed him, as I’m sure you can understand. You see, in that moment, Farhad was most certainly an object – a tool to pull at my heartstrings for the sake of cruelty.”</p><p>“Is that what I’m meant to agree is complicated?” asked Aimé. “That he decided to torture a dying man just to hurt you?”</p><p>“Suppose Colm is correct in what he says?” asked Jean-Pierre tightly. “Suppose it is my fault? That I encouraged him, what I gave him the impression that I wanted him to do it?”</p><p>“Suppose,” said Aimé, “that you accidentally sent signals that said, “Please kidnap me and keep me chained in your cellar for years,” which he misread?”</p><p>“Don’t say it as if I’m crazy,” said Jean-Pierre – his tone was pleading, and Aimé hurried to shake his head, pulling him closer, wrapping his arms around his middle.</p><p>“No, baby, I don’t mean it like that. I’m just saying it’s not your fucking fault.”</p><p>“But what if—”</p><p>“What did you do?” asked Aimé. “Flirt with him at a party? Give him a blowjob? Something small, something that he was obsessed with, after?”</p><p>“I didn’t know who he was,” said Jean-Pierre quietly. “His face, I didn’t recognise it, I’d never seen a portrait of him before. He doesn’t like his portrait taken. I had slipped into a coat closet at a party to poison an ambassador.”</p><p>“As you do.”</p><p>“Do you want for me to tell you or not?”</p><p>“Put your fingers in my mouth and I’ll be quiet.”</p><p>That, at least, made Jean-Pierre smile, albeit thinly. “It was a slow-acting poison, an enchanted patch of my own design – I slipped it into the inner lining of the ambassador’s coat pocket over the heart and at the same time Myrddin came into the room. I secreted myself in the shadows, watched him take the gloves out of the same ambassador’s pocket and daub a contact poison into the inside of the fingertips. He is an alchemist, you know, Myrddin. His, his garden of ingredients is—”</p><p>“You were both poisoning the same ambassador?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre nodded. “For different reasons – this was in the time leading up to the Renfrew Strike, do you know what that is?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“I… Well, then it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say he was of great interest to fae and demonic communities, an ambassador from a fae kingdom himself. I wanted him dead for his conservatism – Myrddin wanted him dead for the opposite. He sensed the enchantment – he is not possessed of great ingenuity as an enchanter, but he has a great sensitivity to magic and its flows, more so than perhaps anyone I’ve met outside of Asmodeus. He didn’t sense me in that closet, but I saw him notice the poison patch, and later it— I was feigning myself a waiter. He recognised me later, reached for my watch and commented on the enchantment in it, on its unique signature. I thought we were each two assassins, each of us… I didn’t realise who he was until after. I wanted to distract him, to make him think of me as vapid, stupid, a slut, and I think perhaps I succeeded in that in the first instance.”</p><p>“The second time?” Aimé asked.</p><p>“That time I was trying to assassinate the king,” said Jean-Pierre. “I knew who Myrddin was, by then. I felt stupid for having fucked him before, having not tried to kill him when I could have. Perhaps I wanted to prove a point. He caught me and he talked to me in a way I didn’t…” Jean-Pierre trailed off, his lips pressed loosely together, his gaze far away. “We didn’t have sex. He let me go.”</p><p>Aimé watched Jean-Pierre’s blank face, squeezing his hips again, pressing his thumbs against the fabric of Jean-Pierre’s Christmas jumper, the pads of his thumbs pressing against the wool.</p><p>“He talked to you?” Aimé asked.</p><p>Jean-Pierre didn’t immediately say anything.</p><p>“What, he said the second time he wanted you, liked you, or?” Aimé didn’t like what he saw on Jean-Pierre’s face, didn’t like the tightness there. “You don’t want to talk about it.”</p><p>“No,” said Jean-Pierre. “No, I do, I am not trying to lie to you, to hide it.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” said Aimé, drumming his fingers on Jean-Pierre’s lower back. He didn’t want to hear more right now and he was grateful not to have to say it, didn’t know how to tell Jean-Pierre that hearing about Myrddin made him feel sick to his fucking stomach without Jean-Pierre thinking it was about <em>him</em>, that it was his fault. “You don’t have to tell me right now.”</p><p>There was a loud, popping bang from the other side of the ground, and Aimé jumped, feeling Jean-Pierre shift in his lap, his wings spreading to keep his balance as they both turned to look.</p><p>Benedictine had a pistol in her hand – had she been carrying that the whole fucking time? – and Colm had lined up a few empty beer cans on top of one of the walls so that Bene could shoot.</p><p>“Colm says you can’t shoot a pistol,” said Aimé, trying to stop himself from flinching when Benedictine let off three rounds at once, knocking down a can each time. She and Colm were talking to Asmodeus, both of them looking up at him as De shook his head and Colm tried to take the wine glass out of his hand.</p><p>“I can,” said Jean-Pierre. “But the recoil from a lot of handguns can do me damage – the bones in my hand are very light, and they break easily, the muscle straining easily, too. When I use rifles I can brace myself better. I can shoot a little with one, I just would need to be careful with the calibre and how long I was using it for.”</p><p>“It’s loud,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre smiled as he stood to his feet, cupping Aimé’s cheek and tugging him up by his wrist, and Aimé let himself be led toward the other angels, close enough that they could hear Benedictine needling at De.</p><p>“Come on,” she was saying. “Please? For me? For your little sister whom you love so much?”</p><p>“You aren’t especially little,” said Asmodeus, and Benedictine dropped the fem act and punched him in the arm, making Asmodeus laugh and pull her close to him. Bene let out a wordless protest before complaining loudly in Creole, trying to grab Asmodeus around the middle and wrestle with him.</p><p>Asmodeus, strong as a steel pillar, didn’t even budge as she tried before he bent at the knees, caught her around the middle, and lifted her clean off the ground. Benedictine was a muscular woman, the same height as Jean-Pierre – <em>tall</em> – and it made Aimé laugh to see how easily Asmodeus lifted her, passing her around himself and throwing her over his shoulder.</p><p>“I remind you I still have a gun!” said Benedictine, and Asmodeus replied, “Are you sure of that?”</p><p>Bene’s hand went to the holster at her arm, and Aimé laughed even harder as he watched Asmodeus flip the pistol in his hand, twirling it between his fingers like it was a fucking yo-yo.</p><p>“You’re such a fucking show-off,” said Colm.</p><p>“Am I?” asked Asmodeus, and turning with Benedictine hanging down his back so she could see, he held up the gun and shot a bullet through the last can on the wall, doing it at such an angle that it teetered on the brick but didn’t actually fall, and sent the ring pull sailing into the air. “Oh, yes,” he said. “It would seem I am.”</p><p>De put Bene down, kissing her on the cheek before he passed her the gun back, and Benedictine scowled at him until she turned away, and on her face Aimé saw a slight grin as she came to nudge Colm in the side.</p><p>“You want to try?” asked Benedictine, doing something to the gun that made it click, and before Aimé could reply she’d placed it in his hand.</p><p>“Is this a Glock?” he asked.</p><p>“It’s a Taurus,” said Benedictine, shifting the weight of the gun in his hand, and Aimé swallowed, surprised by how heavy it was, how the grip was textured, surprisingly cool to the touch. “You’d probably be better off with a Glock – my hand is bigger than yours, and all your strength is in your arms, not your fingers.”</p><p>“Is this where I make a joke about you being a lesbian?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“Fire it,” said Benedictine. “Feel the recoil.”</p><p>Aimé’s stomach did an anxious flip, uncomfortable with the weight of it, the faint smell on the air that he recognised as burnt powder mixing with the smell of Jean-Pierre’s feathers.</p><p>He thought about Colm digging a bullet out of his side, and he looked back to Jean-Pierre’s face, at the scar under his eye shining in the cool afternoon light. It was different to the knives, somehow – maybe because he was shit with knives, maybe because throwing one he’d probably not even nick the skin, let alone kill someone.</p><p>A blast of gunpowder launching a bullet from a chamber didn’t much depend on the strength of one’s shoulders.</p><p>He raised the gun, felt the weight of it, and Benedictine reached to adjust his grip and the angle of his wrist. She was talking about recoil, about how he had to hold his wrist to make sure he didn’t jar anything, but the actual words mingled together into something like wet glue, sticking in his ears but not actually getting any further.</p><p>“… and pull the trigger,” said Bene.</p><p>“No,” said Aimé, pushing the gun back to her.</p><p>“De doesn’t like guns either,” said Benedictine.</p><p>“He won’t touch them for me or Jean,” said Colm pointedly, and Asmodeus finished the last of the wine in his glass.</p><p>“You and Jean aren’t ordinarily asking me to shoot at cans,” said Asmodeus coolly, and Aimé relaxed into his hand when it landed on his shoulder, squeezing slightly. “Ready?”</p><p>“Where’s your accordion?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus gave him a flat look as Jean-Pierre shook himself like a pigeon and put his wings away, going to help Bene stack Colm’s chairs away as Colm threw open the shed.</p><p>“In the back of Paddy’s minivan,” he said mildly. “Why, are you planning to give it a try?”</p><p>“You notice he was upset?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus’ thumb patted against the top of his shoulder before he drew his hand back, looking to the other three.</p><p>“He’s in a hard place at the moment,” said Asmodeus. “He’ll be alright.”</p><p>“How do I tell him it’s not his fault?” asked Aimé.</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Asmodeus, his expression serious, but distant. “When you find the answer, make sure to share it with me, would you?”</p><p>* * *</p><p>
  <strong>JEAN-PIERRE</strong>
</p><p>“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to, you know,” said Aimé as they came up to Pádraic and Bedelia’s house, where Pádraic had brought the minivan out front so that they could all pile inside.</p><p>“I want to,” said Jean-Pierre. “I don’t want to ruin it for everyone.”</p><p>“I know, I know,” said Aimé, kissing his hand. “I’m just saying, if you’re too upset—”</p><p>“But I <em>want</em> to,” Jean-Pierre repeated, looking down as Aimé as Aimé gave him a concerned look. “I do feel fine,” he said. “Really. It is only that I think of it a lot, at times like these. It’s… It is the time I recall my captivity most keenly, when I am surrounded by those I love.”</p><p>He’d gone through the post that morning, and among the various sheafs of correspondence intended for Asmodeus, there had been cards for Jean-Pierre and Colm.</p><p>Some of the ones for Jean had been nice – Ephraim Margolis, a doctor he knew who was now working in Bristol, had sent him a nice card wishing him a happy holiday even though he didn’t even celebrate Christmas, and there had been a few others. Another had arrived with a royal seal on the back of it, and Jean-Pierre had tossed it on the fire before anyone could ask about it.</p><p>When they came up the path into the house, it was to the sound of Bedelia and George laughing, and to softly jingling bells.</p><p>“<em>Wow</em>,” said Aimé, and Jean-Pierre realised, his own lips curving up into a bright beam of a smile, that Aimé hadn’t seen Pádraic in his full Father Christmas regalia before.</p><p>It was a beautiful suit, and it delighted everyone who laid eyes on him, when he was fully decked out. Pádraic wore some padding in the front because as large a man as he was, he lacked the plump belly for which the character was so famous. The suit was a vibrant red velvet, and apart from the thick, white fur ruff around the neck and trimming the cuffs of his sleeves, gold bands of filigree hemmed the jacket and the cuffs of the trousers; the buckles on his black belt and heavy black boots were gold too, and bells hung from around the red, white-furred sleeper’s cap and from his breast.</p><p>Pádraic bade Aimé hello, to which Aimé replied, and then signed something about Pádraic looking sexy and asking to sit in his lap – it made Pádraic laugh, a rumbling chuckle from deep in his chest, before he tried to cuff Aimé upside the head, but Aimé dodged it nimbly.</p><p>“I love the wig,” said Aimé, and Pádraic leaned down for him to reach up and touch the thick, white beard that Pádraic wore around his mouth, not to mention the long, wavy-haired wig that came around his shoulders. “Is it real hair?”</p><p>Pádraic nodded, and Aimé wrinkled his nose.</p><p>“It’s horsehair,” said Bedelia, kissing Aimé on the cheeks when he leaned to greet her. She was wearing a beautiful red dress, trimmed in gold and white fur to match her father, and in between the two of them George looked quite ridiculous in a red and green elf suit, beaming brightly.</p><p>Pádraic signed, “It’s the wrong colour,” to which Aimé responded out loud, “No, it’s not. You’re just old. Would you rather wear a mitre, too?”</p><p>Pádraic arched an eyebrow at him, and signed, “Yes.”</p><p>Aimé sniggered.</p><p>“What’s a mitre?” asked George.</p><p>“A bishop’s hat,” said Asmodeus. “Are we ready?”</p><p>Jean-Pierre, Benedictine, and Asmodeus sat in the back so that they didn’t have to fold up their legs – Aimé, Colm, and Bedelia obviously had no trouble in that arena, and George sat up front with Pádraic, chattering cheerfully away to Colm and Aimé about what he’d been learning on his course.</p><p>Jean-Pierre curled in against Asmodeus’ side, his head leaned into Asmodeus’ chest as Asmodeus gently stroked his hair.</p><p>“Feeling alright?” he asked quietly.</p><p>“Yes,” said Jean-Pierre.</p><p>Asmodeus pressed a kiss to the top of his head, and for good measure, he turned and kissed the top of Benedictine’s head, which made her laugh and elbow him in the thigh.</p><p>Most of them were in Christmas clothes – Colm was wearing a jumper that reads <em>Nollaig shona dhuit!</em> with a picture of a sheep wreathed in Christmas lights, and even Aimé had allowed himself to be wrestled into another of Colm’s jumpers by Jean-Pierre, a wonderful green jumper strung with lights and baubles, as if he was a Christmas tree himself. Benedictine’s was a wonderful sweatshirt that Jean-Pierre hasn’t seen before, one she brought with her – it was a batik design showing a fanal painted in bright pale colours, and he wondered if she’d send him one, if he asked where she got it.</p><p> Asmodeus, in neither costume nor novelty shirt, looked impossibly secular between them, dressed in tight, dark trousers and a dark blue shirt – he hadn’t even picked out a particularly seasonal colour.</p><p>“Couldn’t you try, at least?” asked Jean-Pierre.</p><p>“My accordion is in the boot,” said Asmodeus. “I’ll even sing a carol, if it’s Benjamin Britten.”</p><p>“Nothing Benjamin Britten wrote can be called a <em>carol</em>,” said Jean-Pierre scathingly, and Asmodeus, smiling, squeezed him and Benedictine against him at the same time. “Joyeux Noel, Benedictine,” Jean-Pierre said pointedly.</p><p>“Joyeux Noel, chou,” said Bene, and between them, Asmodeus sighed like he was having the worst time in the world, but his lips were smiling.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please fill out this survey about Powder and Feathers <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1R5L5s4dYG5KTg4MSXKiTXbG2e9pYboAEVrxSMQZyRw0/edit?chromeless=1">here!</a></p><p>The plan with this work, as I did with <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25135384">Heart of Stone</a>, is to publish chapter by chapter and then publish as an eBook for sale!</p><p>Find out more about my published works <a href="https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/post/629449536272826368/landing-page">here.</a> Totally check out my <a href="https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>, and follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/johannesevans">Twitter.</a> Please remember to comment when you read new updates!</p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>  <b></b></p><div class="center">
  <p>CAST OF CHARACTERS</p>
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  <p> </p>
  <p>    <b>ANGELS</b><br/></p>
</div><b>Jean-Pierre Delacroix</b> – A winged angel that Fell outside Paris in 1732 and fought in the French Revolution of ’89. Jean-Pierre is a trained doctor and a skilled enchanter, and has recently set his sights on the student Aimé Deverell.<p><b>Colm O’Beaglaoich</b> – An angel that Fell off the coast of South Kerry in 1732, Colm was a member of the United Irishmen, and fought in the failed Irish Rebellion of ’98. He devotes much of his free time to growing fruit and vegetables, and is a firm believer in mutual aid within the community. </p><p><b>Asmodeus (a.k.a. Ashley Craddock)</b> – An angel as old – so far as anybody can tell – as time itself, Asmodeus walks the Earth finding and offering initial support to new angels that Fall, and directing them to the Embassy so that they can access resources.</p><p><b>Benedictine Zetrenne</b> – A winged angel that Fell outside Okay in 1732 and fought in the Haitian Revolution that began in ’91. Benedictine is now a lawyer and human rights activist, and volunteers particularly with children’s charities.</p><p><b>George Fell Downe</b> – An angel that fell into the Dublin Harbour quite recently, George is a very kind and cheerful man that isn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He likes cats.</p><p><b>Padraic Mac Giolla Chríost</b> – A winged angel that Fell to the Boyne Valley in the early 1300s, and comforted the sick and dying when the Black Death came to Ireland, later becoming a nurse. Padraic is a gigantic man of very few words, and is utterly devoted to his daughter, Bedelia.</p><p><b>Bedelia Ní Giolla Chríost</b> – An angel that came to Earth in ’94, Bedelia is now studying radiography at university, inspired by her father to join the medical profession. Bedelia is a bubbly girl that often makes up for her father’s laconic nature, and is vicious in debate. </p><p><b>The Celestial Legation For Angels, Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim, and Powers (a.k.a. The Embassy)</b> – The international base of support for Fallen angels worldwide, based out of the Celestial Consulate in Harare, Zimbabwe. They keep records of Fallen angels, assist in providing legal documentation and assistance, offer grants and scholarships for angels to access food, shelter, education, and community.</p><div class="center">
  <p>HUMANS</p>
</div><b>Aimé Deverell</b> – An oil painter and enchanter head over heels for Jean-Pierre. A student of philosophy at Trinity College, Aimé is a depressive, a nihilist, and an alcoholic – worst of all, he is a centrist.<p><b>Fr. John Robert O’Flaherty </b>– An ancient man riddled with arthritis, Father O’Flaherty is the head priest at St Fiachra’s Church. He is highly traditional, and generally resistant to change. </p><p><b>Fr. James Aloysius Byrne </b>– Born in a mother and baby home in 1971, James was later adopted, and later took the cloth. Now a priest at St Fiachra’s, and the (in his own mind) unlucky recipient of Asmodeus’ attentions, he is a man plagued by doubt.</p><p><b>Jules Gagne</b> – Jules was a worker on a wheat farm some miles outside of Paris, and found Jean-Pierre when he Fell. Jean-Pierre was the love of his life, and he remained devoted to him until his death in 1768.</p><p><b>Marguerite Gagne</b> – Marguerite Gagne was a seamstress when not working on a wheat farm, and when her son found Jean-Pierre, she agreed that they should bring him into their home. </p><p><b>Anicroche Gagne</b> – Anicroche was a very good dog.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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